Ancestry ThruLines™

Of the new items Ancestry is offering that I've tested this is the most interesting.

Using the public or private searchable tree linked to your AncestryDNA results ThruLines™ searches for people who appear in both your tree or other Ancestry member trees that are marked as public or private searchable. ThruLines™ uses this information to illustrate how you and your DNA matches might be related through common ancestors.

ThruLines™ may also suggest potential ancestors. They will appear with a dashed outline around their names. These are people who are not in your family tree, but appear in the trees of other Ancestry members who may share a common ancestor with you.

Here's an example from my results.

Not shown, I found and was able to contact a fourth cousin. That is strong evidence for the concordance between our genetic and documentary trees along the lines to our common ancestral couple. It's strong evidence, not complete confirmation as there's still the possibility of an error along the lines — if, for example the brother of the supposed father was the child's biological parent.

Many relationships suggested did not involve a DNA match, just a match between two trees. These included trees for part of my ancestry I choose not to link to my DNA results. A enhancement would be to filter out matches not involving a DNA test.

The following is release information from Ancestry.

● ThruLines™ will be in open beta on 2/27 and any member who meets the following criteria will
receive ThruLines™ insights free for a limited time.

1) Your AncestryDNA results are linked to a public or private searchable family tree.
2) You have DNA matches who have also linked their results to a public or private indexed family tree.
3) Your linked family tree is well built out. It should be 3-4 generations deep to have the
best chance of ThruLinesTM finding new discoveries for you to explore.

Qualifying customers can access this feature from the AncestryDNA logged-in home page. This
feature will also be highlighted on our landing page at www.ancestry.com/product/new-release.
Ancestry often puts new features in Beta as we test and refine ideas and gather feedback from
our customers. Features will come out of Beta when we have enough feedback to validate their
value to our customers, including whether the feature will require a subscription.