From the BBC News:
A palaeontologist has come up with a novel way of studying historical manuscripts, by treating them as fossils from an extinct species.
John Cisne, writing in Science magazine, says manuscripts from the Middle Ages have a lot in common with animal populations.
For this reason, he claims, he can work out how many copies of a manuscript once existed and how regularly they were destroyed, simply by applying a biological model.
Historians have cautiously welcomed this rare link between the arts and sciences.
More here.