School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK. a.r.hoelzel@dur.ac.uk
Ever since its invention, the polymerase chain reaction has been the method of choice for work with ancient DNA. In an application of modern genomic methods to material from the Pleistocene, a recent study has instead undertaken to clone and sequence a portion of the ancient genome of the cave bear.