Do you think it would be possible to use dna from fossils of ancient humans to find people related to them?

Question

I mean people of this day and age I mean. Direct relatives of ancient humans.

Answer 1

Yes,

in fact, it has been used.  Check out the seven daughters of eve by Bryan Skyes.  Mitochondrial DNA is useful in this kind of question, this is primarily because mtDNA is stable and you share the same mtDNA with your mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother and way back... and thus, you can have a family tree.  Finding out in father side could be tough though.

Finding out the DNA from fossils of ancient humans is even faster now, with the advent of pyrosequencing.

Matching is of no difficulty.  This can be done by simple comparison of genetic fingerprint.

Answer 2

Most definitely.

Answer 3

Darling, we are ALL directly related to the first humans.

Answer 4

Yes that is a possibility.

Imagine a strand of DNA (called a chromosome).. it has strips of genes on it.. they kind of look like bar codes.

Our DNA is 2 chromosome linked together.

One chromosome contains information from the mother's side, and the other from the father's.

These barcode-like strips can be inherited from your mother's great-great grandmother.. and you could have them in your genes

If they matched that of a fossils DNA, then they could be your relatives.