XPost: alt.culture.us.southwest, nm.general   
   From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Kheepur Panzon wrote:   
   > Yet another story on Billy the Kid and his   
   > mother. Not sure what this implies if his   
   > mother's grave has gone without a marker   
   > all this time:   
      
   That's perhaps the most unrealistic part of the whole proposed project   
   and the part that will very likely clear up nothing. IF a sufficiently   
   long DNA segment can be recovered from whoever's bones they happen to   
   find in relocated cemetary, and it doesn't match (even if the Kid or his   
   unwilling stand-in can be found AND a sufficient sample can be had), if   
   will mean nothing.   
      
   I don't know if there are any living persons in a direct matriarchal   
   McCarty line. If such could be found, mitochondrial DNA would be a   
   better bet. Mitocondrial DNA is more likely to be recovered from very   
   old remains than nuclear DNA. You would need to follow the female line,   
   if any, but Billy would carry mtDNA from his mother. It would cut out   
   the most iffy proposition, that of finding her remains, which really   
   cannot be done with any certainty. Unless, of course, there was a match,   
   which would still likely depend on mtDNA. mtDNA comparison cannot yield   
   an absolute positive, but it can be close enough that a high-percentage   
   match would be convincing. mtDNA is nice, since it elliminates the   
   chance that an unknown daliance somewhere along the line could be a factor.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)