Not necessarily, on age at least. The article just states:
> After death, DNA disintegrates into fragments, which become smaller over the centuries. Ata’s DNA fragments are still large, another clue that she’s less than 500 years old.
Carbon-dating and other forensic methods should be able to nail that down much more precisely. If nothing else, at some point, national DNA databases will pinpoint the fetus's relatives.
The only thing I can find on the age is "younger than 500 years":
> the average DNA fragment size for Ata is ∼300 bp which, based on a DNA-decay model (Allentoft et al. 2012), is consistent with a sample younger than 500 yr.
mmh... I'm unsure about what to think. Reduced ribs, crest and pelvis shape suggest more a small monkey without tail than a human to me. Is too tiny for having calcified bones yet. Some things suggest human foetus, not stillborn. Other are not easy to explain.
> Ata’s bones contain DNA that not only shows she was human
The fact that there's a DNA already means it's not an alien, doesn't it? Having a life form with the same uber-complex chain of nucleotides as the life on earth developed is as improbable as a server on an alien mothership being compatible with a Macbook. (Quick primer on the subject: https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/cracking-aliens-gen...)
Having said that, the NYT article reads like the researchers are still unable to explain the discrepancies between the age and the well-formed skeleton as well as the number of mutations. Were there any secret nuclear tests conducted half a century ago in Chile? But that would also probably be insufficient to cause all that. I would bet on experiments trying to cause deliberate mutations.
Not necessarily. Can be also a contamination from an external source of DNA. The article claims a mixed chilean-european DNA but we don't know how many moved humans had touched this skeleton before
And there is the fact that we share DNA with other species. It seems [1] that we shared a 93% of DNA with Macaca mulatta for example.
I don't know any other hypothetical building blocks for complex life. It could possibly be the case that the alternatives are too unstable and that alien life would be made of something remarkably similar to (but obviously not identical to) Earth DNA.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 37.8 ms ] thread"Ata was stillborn or died immediately after her birth, perhaps 40 years before her remains were discovered."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/22/genetic-test...
> After death, DNA disintegrates into fragments, which become smaller over the centuries. Ata’s DNA fragments are still large, another clue that she’s less than 500 years old.
> the average DNA fragment size for Ata is ∼300 bp which, based on a DNA-decay model (Allentoft et al. 2012), is consistent with a sample younger than 500 yr.
https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2018/03/21/gr.223693....
The fact that there's a DNA already means it's not an alien, doesn't it? Having a life form with the same uber-complex chain of nucleotides as the life on earth developed is as improbable as a server on an alien mothership being compatible with a Macbook. (Quick primer on the subject: https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/cracking-aliens-gen...)
Having said that, the NYT article reads like the researchers are still unable to explain the discrepancies between the age and the well-formed skeleton as well as the number of mutations. Were there any secret nuclear tests conducted half a century ago in Chile? But that would also probably be insufficient to cause all that. I would bet on experiments trying to cause deliberate mutations.
If it's about generic organic molecules then the DNA is a local construct. If it's about microorganisms, then it's different.
Also, RNA seems to work and it's possible we started out using RNA and later evolved to DNA.
And there is the fact that we share DNA with other species. It seems [1] that we shared a 93% of DNA with Macaca mulatta for example.
[1] https://www.livescience.com/1411-monkey-dna-points-common-hu...
Although, I bet there will be some people who would not believe the results.