MADRID, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Swedish biologist Svante Paabo has won the Princess of Asturias Award for technical and scientific research, the foundation reported on Wednesday.
The 63-year-old biologist is considered one of the founders of palaeogenetics. "He has led the project to completely sequence the genome of Neanderthals, a species that became extinct approximately 30,000 years ago," the foundation said.
He demonstrated that it was possible to "analyze DNA of Egyptian mummies" and worked on "establishing rigorous methods to rescue ancient DNA sequences".
Paabo's methodology has served to study the phylogeny and genetics of populations of extinct animals.
In 1997, he rescued mitochondrial DNA sequenced from samples of a Neanderthal-Type specimen. That was the first time molecular genetic data had been extracted from a hominid fossil.
The Princess of Asturias Awards, which will be delivered next fall in Oviedo in Spain's northern region of Asturias, "are aimed at rewarding the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out at an international level by individuals, institutions or groups of individuals or institutions."
The prize includes 50,000 euros (58,840 US dollars).