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Valuable Neanderthal bones could be damaged by fruitless searches for ancient
DNA. A few pieces of DNA from Neanderthal samples found at Mezmaiskaya in Russia
and the Feldhofer Cave in Germany were recently recovered intact, and were
sequenced. Matthew Collins of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne fears that
this could encourage others to dig through old finds looking for DNA. Collins
says in Nature this week (vol 410, p 771) that DNA samples can only
survive in the cold. Of 39 other Neanderthal cave sites in north-west Europe,
only nine are cold enough to preserve DNA.