Posted on 08/23/2018 3:42:12 AM PDT by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
“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.”
There was probably as much love in this mating as when Berlin fell to the Russians.
I think I know her...
“too young to have left much of a mark on her world”
Maybe she was the one that wiped out the neanderthals and denisovians.
See what happens when you eat organic? You go extinct.
In before the pic of Chelsea Clinton and her... progenitors...
Did they assume her gender? Aren’t there ways with DNA to determine gender or can they actually identify chromosomes, including 2 of the X variet.
DNA analysis reveals gender.
Any port in a storm, eh sailor?
Pretty old sample, looks like they got enough to figure out the Denisovan and Neandertal lineage, dunno about the gender, may not have survived.
Hey, we’re saying “front hole” now.
See what happens when you hang around outside the cave when mom and dad aren’t home? You get eaten by cannibals.
Love child, never meant to be.
My pleasure!
The Neandertal Enigma"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
in local libraries
Dang - hate when that happens.
Neanderthals went on an extremely successful Love Tour, though according to genetic evidence, they had no interest in African women.
That reference is unfair to Neanderthals.
“Her name was Bertha, Bertha Butt, she was one of the Butt sisters.”
:-))
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