Researchers recovered ancient DNA from hairs embedded in the dental cavities of two adult man-eating lions shot near the Tsavo River in Kenya in 1898. The findings, published in Current Biology, add a molecular chapter to a historic encounter and show how degraded genetic material can still reveal surprising details about predators, their prey, and their kinship across generations.
In the late 19th century, a pair of adult lions terrorized a construction camp along the Tsavo, staging nighttime ambushes and feeding on workers. Estimates place the toll at least 28 people. The animals were killed by John Henry Patterson, the project engineer overseeing the camp, who later transferred the lions’ remains to a major natural history institution. The Field Museum in Chicago received the specimens in 1925, where they joined a growing archive of big cat history. The story behind these remains remains a potent reminder of the complex relationship between humans and large predators in East Africa’s colonial era.
By the early 1990s, researchers had accumulated thousands of hair fragments from prey carried away by predators and preserved in teeth. In a modern analysis, scientists examined ancient DNA extracted from those hairs found in lion teeth, with a focus on mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA resides in cellular energy factories and tends to survive in degraded samples, making it a practical target for reconstructing ancient lineages and diets when nuclear DNA is scarce.
The resulting genetic picture included traces from giraffes, humans, wildebeest, waterfowl, antelope, zebra, and lions themselves. The team also concluded that the two lions shared a close family relationship, likely brothers. Ethical considerations led the researchers to avoid testing living human relatives in the surrounding area, a step taken to protect potential descendants from distress. The implications of learning that ancestors in the region had fallen prey to lions remain a topic of reflection among scholars and communities alike.
The detection of antelope DNA was surprising because the nearest known populations lie well beyond the lions’ typical range near Tsavo. The data suggest the predators moved over substantial distances, pursuing roaming herds during a period when the attacks subsided and the workers could return to routine tasks. This finding hints at broader ecological connections that shaped predator behavior during that era.
Another striking result was the absence of buffalo DNA in the samples, even though a buffalo hair was observed under microscopic examination. In the Tsavo region, buffalo later emerged as a major prey item for lions, a shift not reflected in the DNA recovered from the 1898 remains. Patterson’s field notes from the expedition reportedly did not mention encounters with buffalo or with cattle in the area. The broader disease ecology of the time, including livestock plagues believed to have arrived in Africa from India in the early 1880s, helps explain some of the landscape changes that affected both predators and prey, including domestic cattle and African buffalo populations.
Additionally, a separate note from another field underscores how technology expands scientific knowledge. In Hawaii, researchers using drone-assisted surveys have identified several new plant species, illustrating how modern methods broaden our understanding of biodiversity beyond famous predator stories.