Orchid Cellmark has been working with a team of scientists and historians for a few years to assist in the identification of bones taken from a chapel in Seville. The historical fact is that Christopher Columbus was originally buried in the Dominican Republic, but the Spanish were supposed to have moved his remains first to Cuba and then to Seville. The big question is whether the bones found in the chapel in Seville belong to Christopher Columbus.

It was felt that the best approach to this question was to test those bones, in comparison to bones known to have come from his brother Diego and his son Hernando. By examining autosomal and Y-SNPs, Orchid Cellmark has been able to obtain a full Y-SNP profile from Hernando but the profiles from the other two sets of bones are incomplete.

At this time, Orchid Cellmark awaits more bones from the chapel in Seville purported to be from Christopher Columbus and his brother Diego.