Published on
05/09/2026 - 8:36 GMT+2
In the Middle Ages, most texts were written on sheep, goat and cattle skin, used as a writing material and known as parchment.
It is in some of Europe’s famous ancient manuscripts that researchers found clues into the history of the deadly sheep pox virus — a viral disease of sheep that causes fever, skin lesions, and death. Such traces can help scientists to understand how pathogens evolved and how they impacted past societies.
An international team of geneticists, historians, virologists, protein chemists and conservators, led by scientists at University College Dublin, has extracted DNA from the skin used to make these centuries-old documents.
