The 1996 DNA Paper In Context

The Stone and Stoneking paper published in Ancient Biomolecules in 1996 was not just significant for what it revealed about the Hourglass Cave man.

It was significant as a contribution to the early development of ancient DNA research in North America.

Ancient DNA research — the extraction and analysis of genetic material from ancient remains — was a new and rapidly developing field in the early 1990s.

The first demonstrations that ancient DNA could be recovered from well-preserved specimens dated to the late 1980s.