Working at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig — one of the world’s premier institutions for ancient DNA research — Krause has contributed to major findings about Neanderthal genetics, the peopling of Europe, and the population history of multiple ancient civilizations.

His specific recognition that Ötzi’s steppe ancestry didn’t fit the chronological pattern — that the Iceman “was always an outlier” and was “too old to have that type of ancestry” — was the scientific intuition that motivated the reanalysis.

Albert Zink, the scientific director of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies, has overseen the scientific program around the Ötzi mummy for years, managing research access, coordinating studies, and contributing his own expertise in mummy science and ancient pathology.

His observation that there will “always be new doors opening” for Ötzi research reflects the perspective of someone who has watched successive generations of technology transform what can be learned from this single specimen.

Ke Wang, an anthropologist at Fudan University in Shanghai and one of the co-authors of the 2023 paper, represents the increasingly global character of ancient DNA research.

Major ancient genomics studies are no longer the pro