Ancient humans' taste for snails could explain an unusual pattern of present-day distribution for one snail species. Adele Grindon and Angus Davison at the University of Nottingham, UK, sequenced a mitochondrial gene in 111 European populations of the land snail Cepaea nemoralis (pictured). Of the seven lineages that they identified, one was found just in Ireland and in a region of the Eastern Pyrenees in southwest Europe. The oldest C. nemoralis fossils in Ireland date to about 8,000 years ago - around the time of the first human habitation of the island. The authors suggest that ancient humans might have carried the snails- a popular food -with them as they moved between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, following Europe's Garonne river.
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