Can seventh cousins share 54.7 cM of DNA?

3

I've found two people reported to be seventh cousins who share two autosomal DNA segments:

Chr Start Location  End Location    Centimorgans (cM)   SNPs
11  124,632,262     131,124,570     14.4                1,029
19  49,942,996      63,776,118      40.3                2,020


Is this even possible or must they have a closer connection that is not yet known?

According to this diagram (found here found here: http://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics#mediaviewer/File:Shared_cM_Project_v2_updated.png):

Seventh cousins would only share up to 10 cM, yet strangely it says 8th cousins would share up to 16 cM. Is that an absolute upper limit or just the normal amount expected in most cases? I found this match searching across 38 kits, so there were 38*37/2 combinations to compare or 703 pairs, so a relatively low probability event is conceivable.

Note that these two people are also related more distantly in other lines as follows according to the paper trail:

• Eight cousins twice removed
• Tenth cousins once removed
• Tenth cousins twice removed

4

The source of that chart is the Shared cM Project, which had a recent update: http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2017/08/26/august-2017-update-to-the-shared-cm-project/ You'll see that according to the most recent data, 7th cousins may share significantly more; it is still a small sample size however

– Harry Vervet – 2017-09-11T01:20:42.743

@HarryVervet thank you very much!!! The updated data is amazing. – George Gaál – 2017-09-11T05:53:54.603