**History Hit — “Terror in the Arctic: The Doomed Quest of HMS Terror and Erebus.”** https://www.historyhit.com/terror-in-the-arctic-the-doomed-quest-of-hms-terror-and-erebus/ — 129 men; Beechey Island first winter; ships beset September 12, 1846; Franklin died June 11, 1847; Victory Point note; Crozier abandonment April 22, 1848; 105 survivors; causes of death: starvation, scurvy, pneumonia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning; Rae 1854 Inuit reports; Owen Beattie 1981 lead analysis at Beechey Island exhumations; HMS Erebus found 2014, HMS Terror found 2016.
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## The Science of Ancient DNA: Why a Tooth Survives When Nothing Else Does
The identification of James Fitzjames from a molar extracted from a jawbone found on King William Island represents a convergence of several distinct scientific advances — in DNA extraction, in Y-chromosome profiling, in genealogical database research, and in the institutional memory of Arctic archaeological work that has accumulated since the 1980s.
Understanding why the identification was possible requires a brief understanding of what ancient DNA actually is and why teeth are among the most reliable sources of it.
DNA is a large, chemically complex molecule. It begins degrading from the moment a cell stops being actively maintained by the organism it belongs to. The process is irreversible: enzymes that were previously contained within cellular structures begin breaking down the DNA molecule itself, and external environmental factors — heat, moisture, ultraviolet radiation, oxygen — accelerate the degradation. In temperate or tropical environments, the DNA in a human body is typically too fragmented for useful analysis within a few decades of death. The idea of extracting meaningful genetic information from a 175-year-old body in most of the world’s climates would be essentially unrealistic.