Posted on 02/15/2020 7:18:31 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry.
The study indicated that present-day West Africans trace a substantial proportion, some 2% to 19%, of their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species what the researchers called a "ghost population."
"We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty," said University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the study published this week in the journal Science Advances...
Previous genetic research showed that our species interbred with both the Neanderthals and Denisovans, with modern human populations outside of Africa still carrying DNA from both. But while there is an ample fossil record of the Neanderthals and a few fossils of Denisovans, the newly identified "ghost population" is more enigmatic...
Sankararaman said this extinct species seems to have diverged roughly 650,000 years ago from the evolutionary line that led to Homo sapiens, before the evolutionary split between the lineages that led to our species and to the Neanderthals.
The researchers examined genomic data from hundreds of West Africans including the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin and the Mende people of Sierra Leone, and then compared that with Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. They found DNA segments in the West Africans that could best be explained by ancestral interbreeding with an unknown member of the human family tree that led to what is called genetic "introgression."
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysabah.com ...
An archeological pre-historic human painting shows ancient humans from over 4,000 years ago in Nakhonratchasima, Thailand. (iStock Photo)
Will ping the list, figured you'd want to see it earlier.
Nephilim. Naw...
4000 years ago isn’t very far back—more recent than the Great Pyramids, probably more recent than Stonehenge, far younger than the cave paintings in Spain and France as well as some in Indonesia.
Interesting the guy in that painting has a pompadour and the arms are waaay too long..
Cue the ancient aliens guy
Was the song "Spooky" about one of their descendants?
Saw this coming.
It’s the DNA from the Cylon/Human hybrids, duhhh...
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Isn't the basic definition of a "species" that if they can breed and have fertile offspring they are the same species? So are they truly another species?
Hey isn’t that white face? Should we be offended?
Completely irrelevant is right!
How do they know the species is extinct? Has anyone checked Dennis Rodman's DNA?
Baron Samedi ?
I don’t know. I googled Ghost witchdoctor thinking it would probably give me an African dresses as a ghost. voila!!
He was a Dalian named Salvador.
Homo Heidelbergensis maybe?
thanks for posting SunkenCiv
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