Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)

CHAPTER SIX – Morphological analysis the bone structures

In 1967, the skeletons of the royal couple were studied by Gyula

Regöly-Mérei, pathologist-palaeopathologist,

from Budapest. At that time, a cortical histological section was made based on Anne of Antioch’s left thigh, an 8x6.3 enlarged image of which was published (Regöly-Mérei 1968,445,

Figure 5). This reveals a bone structure that sustained severe post-mortem damage, which is similar to Figure 20 C, but Regöly-Mérei

mentions

Haversian canals that were preserved. This histological survey, however, supported our observation that the DNA in Anne of Antioch’s skeleton could be considerably degraded due to post-mortem damage to the bone structure (see Chapter 7, Point 5). In addition to the condition of the bone structure and the DNA fragmentation in relation to this, the locus of some A-STR markers, as well as the chromosome region corresponding to the locus influences the detectability of the surveyed markers via PCR amplification. Thus, we must be very careful in interpreting the results and check them via DNA sequencing whenever possible.

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