Smallpox DNA is recovered from Spanish conquest-era Chilean mummies

WASHINGTON, July 30 - When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World some five centuries ago, they brought muskets, cannons, armor, horses and attack dogs as they set about colonizing the Americas. But the biggest blow they delivered came from something else entirely — smallpox and other infectious diseases that r

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