“If you had to guess her age, what would you say?” Sana asked.

“I’d say over fifty to be safe. If I wanted to go out on a limb, I’d say eighty. My sense is this is an old individual, based on the amount of arthritis in the finger bones and feet. What would you say, Jack?”

“I think you are right on the money. The only other thing I note is some mild evidence of tuberculosis on a couple of vertebrae, but otherwise she was in very good shape.”

“Remarkably so,” Alex agreed.

“I’m psyched,” Sana said. “The water seal must have functioned perfectly. I wasn’t completely optimistic about finding DNA, but I am now. With those teeth still in their sockets, and as dry as these bones are, there has to be some intact mitochondrial DNA.”

“Don’t jinx yourself,” Shawn warned.

“Why do you want to find DNA?” Alex asked. “Do you have anything in particular in mind?”

Sana just shrugged. “I think it will be interesting and a challenge. It might be fun to see where she was from, genealogically speaking. The ossuary was found in Rome, but that doesn’t mean she was from Rome, or even Italy. In the first century AD, there was a lot of migration because of the Pax Romana. And it will be an interesting addition to the international mitochondrial database, having a first-century woman.”

“How are you going to do it?” Alex asked. “What procedure are you going to follow?”

“First I’ll try a tooth as a source,” Sana said. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use bone marrow. Either way, it’s not a complicated process. It will involve a thorough cleaning of the outside of the tooth to remove any DNA contamination. Then I’ll cut into the crown of the tooth, pull out the dried pulp material from the pulp cavity, suspend it with detergent to break open the cells, treat it with proteases to eliminate the proteins, then extract the DNA. Once I have the DNA in solution, I’ll amplify it with a PCR, then quantify it, then sequence it. It’s as simple as that.”

“What’s your time frame?” Alex asked. “I’d be interested in a follow-up, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Sana glanced at Shawn, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. “It depends to a degree on that first rate-limiting step. Whether there is intact mitochondrial DNA available. If there is, I should have it in a few days or up to a week. Some of the steps function best when they are allowed to percolate overnight.”