The title's kind of confusing bait; the actual interest seems to be:
> The new findings are an important expansion of the kinds of data that can be extracted from skulls and hairs from the past, the researchers said.
> "Now we know that we can reconstruct complete mitochondrial genomes from single hair fragments from lions that are more than 100 years old," de Flamingh said.
i.e. they had the skulls along with the written record of the attack and their shooting, other fauna in the area, etc. and so were able to do the novel hair analysis and then verify it against that.
> The new findings are an important expansion of the kinds of data that can be extracted from skulls and hairs from the past, the researchers said.
> "Now we know that we can reconstruct complete mitochondrial genomes from single hair fragments from lions that are more than 100 years old," de Flamingh said.
i.e. they had the skulls along with the written record of the attack and their shooting, other fauna in the area, etc. and so were able to do the novel hair analysis and then verify it against that.