{
  "id": 17763,
  "title": "Chilean mummies reveal a lost lineage of smallpox",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/07/30/chilean-mummies-reveal-a-lost-lineage-of-smallpox",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-07-30T18:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Scientific American",
    "slug": "scientific-american",
    "url": "https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chilean-mummies-reveal-a-lost-lineage-of-smallpox/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Chilean mummies have revealed the existence of a previously unknown lineage of smallpox, providing rare molecular evidence of how European colonization contributed to the spread of the virus among Indigenous populations. The DNA recovered from two naturally mummified individuals in northern Chile, who lived between 1492 and 1631, belongs to an extinct viral lineage of smallpox. The nearly identical genomes suggest that the two people were infected during the same outbreak or by the same strain circulating in the region at the time. The discovery, reported in Science Advances, fills a gap in the virus's evolutionary history and supports historical accounts that European colonization introduced smallpox to the Americas. The research was an accidental byproduct of a project studying ancestry and population history of the people who lived in northern Chile. The team found the genetic signatures of the variola virus, the pathogen that causes smallpox, using software that scans DNA for ancient bacteria and viruses. The discovery provides a more accurate understanding of smallpox's history in the Americas, as historical records often lack precision at the local level, particularly in Chile. The genomes also indicate that the extinct lineage branched off after medieval European strains but before those that gave rise to modern smallpox, preserving an intermediate stage in the virus's specialization for humans.",
  "summary": "Centuries-old DNA that was found in these mummies belongs to an extinct viral lineage of smallpox that was brought across the Atlantic during European colonization of the Americas",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}