This ancient bone belonged to a child of two extinct human species [Denisovan, Neandertal]

Science mag ^ | August 22, 2018 | Gretchen Vogel

[SunkenCiv]

The woman may have been just a teenager when she died more than 50,000 years ago, too young to have left much of a mark on her world. But a piece of one of her bones, unearthed in a cave in Russia's Denisova valley in 2012, may make her famous. Enough ancient DNA lingered within the 2-centimeter fragment to reveal her startling ancestry: She was the direct offspring of two different species of ancient humans -- neither of them ours. An analysis of the woman's genome, reported in this week's issue of Nature, indicates her mother was Neanderthal and her father was Denisovan, the mysterious group of ancient humans discovered in the same Siberian cave in 2011. It is the most direct evidence yet that various ancient humans mated with each other and had offspring.

Based on other ancient genomes, researchers already had concluded that Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans interbred in ice age Europe and Asia. The genes of both archaic human species are present in many people today. Other fossils found in the Siberian cave have shown that all three species lived there at different times. But the new finding "is sensational" just the same, says Johannes Krause, who studies ancient DNA at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. "Now we have the love child of two different hominin groups, found where members of both groups have been found. It's quite a lot of things happening in one cave through time."

[Deplorable American1776]

Are they sure it was Denisovan and a Neanderthal? Maybe one was a Neanderthal who identified as a Denisovan or vice versa...😋

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[SunkenCiv]

whoops:

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