Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History, Michael Decker, is at the center of a groundbreaking
discovery. An interdisciplinary team from USF and FAU has uncovered the first genomic
proof that Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium, was present in the Eastern Mediterranean
during the Plague of Justinian (AD 541–750).
A University of South Florida–led team reports that DNA evidence from a >200-person
mass grave at Jerash (modern Jordan) identifies Yersinia pestis and provides the first
Mediterranean mass-burial confirmation of the Plague of Justinian, reframing it as
a lived social crisis as well as a biological one.
History professor David Johnson decided it was time to take the stories in the University
of South Florida's collection and share them with the public.
