Jim - Certainly, the best way to distinguish maternal and paternal descendants when trying to identify common ancestors is to test relatives. That sensible practice and my determination to refrain from vigorous attempts to deduce ancestral commonalities with distant cousins were driven home to me by the following experience: My wife has compared ancestries with a predicted 3rd-6th cousin at 23andMe, in which a shared, durable 47cM segment was inherited also by two of our children and two grandsons With the advantage of reasonably comprehensive pedigrees on both sides, a common ancestral couple was identified - indicating a fifth cousin relationship and an impressive genealogic/genetic success story. Our mutual satisfaction, however, was short lived. The test of the mother of my wife's new-found cousin revealed that it was she, not the father, who had passed along the segment. Since the common ancestral couple we had deduced was on her father's side, we had obviously implicated the wrong pair as the one responsible for the shared segment. So, we've now been seeking commonality on her mother's side; but it's taking too long and is of questionable value, given more worthwhile things to do. ------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:31:18 -0500 From: Jim Bartlett <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AUTOSOMAL-DNA] trouble uploading GEDCOM to FTDNA To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Charles I load as many ancestors as FTDNA will take - 9 generations, I think. Once I got a paper trail to a Common Ancestor at the 6th cousin level. Actually it's almost always a match to the husband and wife - you don't know which one passed the atDNA down. I noted the size and location of the largest segment. Recently I got a paper trail to a Common Ancestor at the 8th cousin level who was ancestral to one of the ancestors at other 6th cousin level and the large segment overlapped! Wouldn't this be a type of phasing? As more folks take atDNA testing, I expect to find more of these. Jim - Sent from my iPhone - FaceTime!