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DNA studies in the 1990s appeared to prove that the remains of the last Russian tsar and his family had been found; a new analysis raises questions
In the summer of 1991, the remains of nine people were unearthed from a shallow grave in central Russia. Forensic experts concluded that the skeletons likely were those of the last tsar, Nicholas II, the tsarina, and three of their five children, whose bodies disappeared after they were shot by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. DNA studies in the mid-1990s supported that claim, and in 1998, a special government panel affirmed the bones to be those of the Romanovs, Russia's ill-starred royal family, along with their doctor and three servants.
A new study, however, challenges this verdict. In the current issue of the Annals of Human Biology, a team led by molecular systematist Alec Knight of Stanford University resurrects questions about the discovery of the remains and mounts a blistering attack on the original DNA analysis, contending that the results were tainted. Knight's group also performed the first analysis of the remains of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, the tsarina's sister. All told says Knight, "the evidence does not support the claim that the remains are those of the Romanov family."
"That's nonsense," fires back Pavel Ivanov, a molecular biologist at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow who carried out the original DNA studies with Peter Gill of the U.K. government's Forensic Science Service and several colleagues....