THE Black Death that wiped out around a third of the population of medieval
Europe definitely was bubonic plague, say researchers in France.
Some experts have argued that a more virulent disease like Ebola or anthrax
must have been responsible. So Didier Raoult and his colleagues at the
University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles analysed DNA from the tooth pulp
of three skeletons found in a 14th-century mass grave. The only infectious agent
they found traces of was Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes
bubonic plague (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol
97, p 2251). 鈥淚t seems to be a slightly different strain to today鈥檚,鈥� says Raoult.