Sheepskin was a fine way to spot fraudsters

摘要

YOU might not trust a wheeler dealer in a sheepskin coat, but as a parchment for legal deeds over the past centuries, sheepskin turns out to be a good way to avoid fraud. Sean Doherty at the University of Exeter, UK, and his colleagues analysed 645 pages from 477 legal deeds concerning property in England, Scotland and Wales dating from 1499 to 1969. They first cut a small sample of parchment from each document and isolated collagen from it, a protein made up of a mix of sub-units called peptides. "Each animal has a different set of peptides that make up collagen - it is species variable," says Doherty. This let them work out what type of parchment a deed was written on.