Friday, November 11, 2011

London Graveyards Suggest Black Death Is Extinct


Between 1347 and 1350 the Black Death spread from Turkey to Italy, France, and England, killing  between 30 and 50 million people, up to half Europe's population. Even today 2,000 people die of plague annually. However scientists using new methods for extracting DNA from the bones of plague victims buried in London have discovered no similarity between the genome of the Black Death plague bacterium from the past and the bacterium that causes plague today suggesting that the ancient strain no longer exists


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