The End . . .
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| Plague victims from a gravesite in a 14th century London cemetery (NYT) |
Or Just The Beginning . . .
For years, scientists debated exactly what caused the Black Death. Was it simply infected fleas? Were there other pathogens such as anthrax or ebola that contributed to the virulence of the epidemic?
In September 2011, a worldwide group of scientists, working at the McMaster University Ancient DNA Centre in Ontario, published a paper detailing their work reassembling ancient Y. pestis DNA obtained from the teeth of 14th century victims. They confirmed that the disease was, in fact, caused by the Yersina pestis bacillus (bacillius is a class of bacteria), and that modern Y. pestis is actually genetically similar to the ancient strain (Bos). The next step in their research is to attempt to recreate an exact copy of the ancient bacillus to determine why it was so deadly (NYT).
