About us
About the Administrators
Lead administrator Gareth Henson joined the R-Z198 admin team in March of 2008, shortly after the project’s inception. He administers multiple haplogroup and surname projects in addition to one geographical project. Gareth's research on STR DYF399 was published in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy in 2005, and in 2011 he discovered and named SNPs T-Z709 through T-Z717.
Co-administrator Lucy Nelson joined the team on 11 August 2021. She administers 20 Y-DNA projects including haplogroup, surname, and geographical projects. Lucy is an experienced researcher and has successfully combined traditional genealogy with Y-DNA to solve NPEs and break through brick walls. She moderates a Facebook group for advanced Y-DNA testing and enjoys helping new testers understand their results.
Project History
This project was started in 2008 to bring together FTDNA customers who were confirmed or predicted to be positive for SRY2627. The scope of the project was later extended to cover all customers confirmed or very likely to be positive for L176.2 and/or Z198.
SRY2627 (also known as M167) was one of the first Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) discovered in the human Y chromosome, back in 1997. It is now known to be a subgroup of haplogroup R-L151 - the most common haplogroup in Western Europe. R-SRY2627 was formerly known as R1b1c6.
L176.2 is a mutation discovered in FTDNA's own research lab in the 'Walk the Y' (WTY) research programme which commenced in 2007. The 2011 FTDNA and ISOGG haplogroup trees recognised L176.2 as being "upstream" of SRY2627 (i.e. the SRY2627 mutation occurred in an individual whose paternal line already had the L176.2 mutation).
As it is not a true SNP and has recurred elsewhere in the YDNA haplotree it has since been superseded by Z198.
Z198 is a mutation discovered in 2011/2 by a group of "citizen scientists" investigating data published by the 1000 Genomes Project. It has been confirmed to be equivalent to L176.2.
R-Z198 is around 4500 years old and (together with other branches of R-P312) is associated with the arrival of Indo-European speaking tribes into Western Europe and the expansion of the Bell Beaker Culture out of Iberia into Britain/Ireland and Central Europe. It has three major branches and (as at September 2021) 5 smaller branches.
The major branches are:
R-ZS312 (including R-SRY2627)
R-L165
R-CTS4188
The smaller branches are:
R-Y29886
R-FGC35857
R-BY50344
R-Y131814
R-ZS4817
Links to current haplotrees are included on the project Links page.