Bryan Sykes, who saw the ancient past in genes, dies at 73

Bryan Sykes, an Oxford geneticist, made his name as a swashbuckling public intellectual by studying the DNA of an alpine iceman, taking on ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl’s theory about the peopling of Polynesia, and analyzing samples said to come from yetis, almas and sasquatches but which, he showed, actually came from bears, pigs and people — a disappointing result for Bigfoot hunters that didn’t keep one of them from naming him cryptozoologist of the year in 2013.

And it all started with a visit to the National Hamster Council.

A researcher specializing in inherited bone diseases who was drawn into the burgeoning field of ancient DNA in the late 1980s, Sykes had a hunch that mitochondrial DNA, which passes largely intact from mother to child, could be used to trace the deep origins of human populations. But he needed a way to test his hypothesis.

He remembered learning as a boy that Britain’s millions of pet hamsters were descended from a single female caught in the wild, in Syria. In 1990, he contacted the head of the hamster council, who put him in touch with thousands of owners. They gladly sent him samples from their pets’ stool, a DNA analysis of which showed that indeed they shared a common ancestor. Sykes was right.

What followed was a whirlwind public life for an academic who had built his career in the lab but who soon became one of Britain’s best-known scientists, popularizing cutting- edge technology through TV appearances and best selling books that gave millions of people access to their distant pasts.