[evan_au (OP)]

Researchers claim to have detected mitochondrial DNA of early humans from dirt in a cave, allowing them to distinguish Neanderthals,  Denisovans and modern humans occupying the cave.

They even claim to have detected mitochondrial DNA of animals that inhabited the cave (or were eaten in the cave).

See: https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-human-genomes-plucked-from-cave-dirt-1.21910

[chris]

It is indeed amazing how archaeology, palaeontology and molecular biology are merging.

A few years ago, on a trip to Perth, Western Australia, I interviewed Mike Bunce, who works on extracting DNA from ancient remains.

The really interesting point he made is that, where previously archaeologists or palaeontologists would find something and then try to figure out where it fits into the evolutionary tree, now molecular / DNA signatures can tell you something existed before any large-scale physical remains of it are uncovered.

It's a bit like the biological equivalent of Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which enable chemists to predict the existence of different elemental species before they were actually discovered.