The Stone Age record of South Africa provides some of the earliest evidence for the biological and cultural origins of Homo sapiens. While there is extensive genomic evidence for the selection of polymorphisms in response to pathogen-pressure in sub-Saharan Africa, e.g., the sickle cell trait which provides protection against malaria, there is inadequate direct human genomic evidence for ancient human-pathogen infection in the region. Here, we analysed shotgun metagenome libraries derived from the sequencing of a Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer child who lived near Ballito Bay, South Africa, c. 2000 years ago. This resulted in the identification of ancient DNA sequence reads homologous to Rickettsia felis, the causative agent of typhus-like flea-borne rickettsioses, and the reconstruction of an ancient R. felis genome.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 22. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 July 2023.
All research outputs
#2,109,009
of 33,041,734 outputs
Outputs from Communications Biology
#1,633
of 9,315 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#36,246
of 444,177 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Communications Biology
#75
of 365 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,041,734 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 9,315 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 25.8. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 444,177 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 365 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
