Y studies address the Ridley riddle

One is a writer and journalist and the other is an academic biologist. Both write highly regarded popular books on evolutionary biology, a subject they are both passionate about. Titles, such as The Red Queen and Mendel's Demon, have been created by them, gaining wide critical acclaim. The problem is that both have the bibliographic signature 'Ridley, M'. Matt the journalist and Mark the biologist have been subject to a career-long confusion, made even worse by a shared academic background of studying zoology at Oxford together. The confusion has been a source of considerable amusement for the pair. 'I have no problems at all about being confused with Matt,' says Mark. Just last month he received an invitation to a conference, 'I'm sure they were wanting Matt,' he says. It was their colleague and friend, Richard Dawkins, who suggested that they take a look at how closely they were related given their shared interests, talents and surname. Ridley is not a common name in Britain and as surnames, which were introduced in the country in the 1300s, generally follow the male line, analysis of the Y chromosome can reveal clues to shared lineages. Surnames that are not linked to a craft or trade are of particular interest to genealogists as they are more likely to be linked to particular families than common names linked to trades such as 'Smith'. The pair submitted DNA samples to scientists working at Oxford Ancestors, a company headed by Bryan Sykes at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, set up to carry out just such studies. David Ashworth, a researcher at the company, said that they believe there are three main haplogroups of Y-chromosome patterns following studied of 10 different regions of the chromosome. 65% are assigned to group 1 which is most common in western Britain, Wales and Ireland and is thought to represent an Ancient Briton, Celtic origin. 22% are found to have patterns similar to central and southern Europe and thought to represent an Anglo-Saxon and Roman origin. The third group, of around 8%, show patterns similar to Iceland, Scandinavia, Northern Ireland and northern Scotland that are considered to be of Viking ancestry. The Oxford Ancestors study found that Matt and Mark indeed had a recent common ancestor which came as something of a surprise as Matt traces his family to Northumbria, and Mark to East Anglia, regions of England hundreds of miles …