When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, the nearby town of Herculaneum was buried in extremely hot ash, and flooding may have preserved the proteins in human bones found there
at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, and his colleagues extracted small samples of bone from seven human skeletons recovered from Pompeii and five recovered from Herculaneum. They found that they could isolate traces of ancient protein from all of the samples.
“This is the first work aimed at the detection of [proteins] in people exposed to high temperatures,” says Petrone.Surprisingly, he says, bones from Herculaneum contained a greater diversity of proteins than those from Pompeii, even though they endured higher temperatures. This may be because the bones at the two sites have experienced a different fate since the disaster. The volcanic ash at Herculaneum is thought to have remained waterlogged for most of the last 2000 years, which might have limited the breakdown of proteins in the bones by microbes. Fluctuations in the local water table mean the ash at Pompeii periodically dried out, says Petrone, probably allowing for more microbial-driven decomposition.
The fact that proteins in human bone can survive high temperatures could inspire further investigation, the researchers say. For instance, it may lead to research exploring which of the
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