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Artificial Intelligence Has Found an Unknown 'Ghost' Ancestor in The Human Genome
https://www.sciencealert.com ^ | 25 OCTOBER 2021 | Peter Dockrill

Posted on 11/04/2021 9:18:43 AM PDT by Red Badger

Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia (Cheburgenator/ CC-BY-SA-4.0/Wikimedia Commons)

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Nobody knows who she was, just that she was different: a teenage girl from over 50,000 years ago of such strange uniqueness she looked to be a 'hybrid' ancestor to modern humans that scientists had never seen before.

Only recently, researchers have uncovered evidence she wasn't alone. In a 2019 study analysing the complex mess of humanity's prehistory, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to identify an unknown human ancestor species that modern humans encountered – and shared dalliances with – on the long trek out of Africa millennia ago.

"About 80,000 years ago, the so-called Out of Africa occurred, when part of the human population, which already consisted of modern humans, abandoned the African continent and migrated to other continents, giving rise to all the current populations", explained evolutionary biologist Jaume Bertranpetit from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain.

As modern humans forged this path into the landmass of Eurasia, they forged some other things too – breeding with ancient and extinct hominids from other species.

Up until recently, these occasional sexual partners were thought to include Neanderthals and Denisovans, the latter of which were unknown until 2010.

But in this study, a third ex from long ago was isolated in Eurasian DNA, thanks to deep learning algorithms sifting through a complex mass of ancient and modern human genetic code.

Using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference, the researchers found evidence of what they call a "third introgression" – a 'ghost' archaic population that modern humans interbred with during the African exodus.

"This population is either related to the Neanderthal-Denisova clade or diverged early from the Denisova lineage," the researchers wrote in their paper, meaning that it's possible this third population in humanity's sexual history was possibly a mix themselves of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

In a sense, from the vantage point of deep learning, it's a hypothetical corroboration of sorts of the teenage girl 'hybrid fossil' identified in 2018; although there's still more work to be done, and the research projects themselves aren't directly linked.

"Our theory coincides with the hybrid specimen discovered recently in Denisova, although as yet we cannot rule out other possibilities", one of the team, genomicist Mayukh Mondal from the University of Tartu in Estonia, said in a press statement at the time of discovery.

That being said, the discoveries being made in this area of science are coming thick and fast.

Also in 2018, another team of researchers identified evidence of what they called a "definite third interbreeding event" alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals, and a pair of papers published in early 2019 traced the timeline of how those extinct species intersected and interbred in clearer detail than ever before.

There's a lot more research to be done here yet. Applying this kind of AI analysis is a decidedly new technique in the field of human ancestry, and the known fossil evidence we're dealing with is amazingly scant.

But according to the research, what the team has found explains not only a long-forgotten process of introgression – it's a dalliance that, in its own way, informs part of who we are today.

"We thought we'd try to find these places of high divergence in the genome, see which are Neanderthal and which are Denisovan, and then see whether these explain the whole picture," Bertranpetit told Smithsonian.

"As it happens, if you subtract the Neanderthal and Denisovan parts, there is still something in the genome that is highly divergent."

The findings were published in Nature Communications.

A version of this article was originally published in February 2019.


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; History; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: denisovans; dna; emptydna; genome; ggg; ghostdna; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; jaumebertranpetit; mayukhmondal; mtdna; neandertal; neandertals; neanderthal; neanderthals; peterdockrill
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1 posted on 11/04/2021 9:18:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

Space alien.


2 posted on 11/04/2021 9:20:57 AM PDT by faucetman (Just the facts, ma'am, Just the facts )
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To: faucetman

Angels.........................


3 posted on 11/04/2021 9:22:21 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

4 posted on 11/04/2021 9:22:40 AM PDT by Don W (When blacks riot, neighbourhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn.)
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To: SunkenCiv

PinGGG!.............................


5 posted on 11/04/2021 9:23:15 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: faucetman
Yup


6 posted on 11/04/2021 9:23:34 AM PDT by Sgt_Schultze (When your business model depends on slave labor, you're always going to need more slaves)
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To: faucetman
it's possible this third population in humanity's sexual history was possibly a mix themselves of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

"Space alien."

Worse. Scots.

7 posted on 11/04/2021 9:23:48 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: Red Badger

Will this be used as evidence on the existence of ghosts?


8 posted on 11/04/2021 9:24:15 AM PDT by GreyFriar (Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
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To: Sirius Lee

LOL 😆


9 posted on 11/04/2021 9:24:40 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: Red Badger

Hmm. Maybe the “Holy Ghost?”


10 posted on 11/04/2021 9:25:36 AM PDT by mywholebodyisaweapon ("Carthago Delenda Est")
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To: Red Badger

check out Greek mythology


11 posted on 11/04/2021 9:27:27 AM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: Red Badger

If you’re interested in the details, here’s the original article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08089-7

It is the real thing, not the watered-down version for laymen.


12 posted on 11/04/2021 9:28:00 AM PDT by proxy_user
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Definitely space ghost


13 posted on 11/04/2021 9:28:02 AM PDT by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imaginationd)
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To: GreyFriar
Will this be used as evidence on the existence of ghosts?

Zak Bagans, please pick up the white courtesy phone...


14 posted on 11/04/2021 9:30:59 AM PDT by COBOL2Java (Fauci is a despicable little turd)
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To: Red Badger

Author likes writing “dalliance”.


15 posted on 11/04/2021 9:31:00 AM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Red Badger

All this really proves is that the species that survives is the one that’s horny enough to screw anything that walks.


16 posted on 11/04/2021 9:31:19 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: faucetman

No wonder there are UFOs, Earth girls are easy.


17 posted on 11/04/2021 9:31:31 AM PDT by Aevery_Freeman (I use an euphemism for "Let's Go Brandon!". It's F*** Joe Biden! )
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To: Red Badger
"scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to identify an unknown human ancestor species that modern humans encountered – and shared dalliances with – on the long trek out of Africa millennia ago."
"the discoveries being made in this area of science are coming thick and fast."

Late nights and dark caves...

18 posted on 11/04/2021 9:32:03 AM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches anything.)
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To: Sgt_Schultze
For that, I'd go...


19 posted on 11/04/2021 9:32:38 AM PDT by Alas Babylon! (Rush, we're missing your take on all of this!)
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To: Red Badger

I’m sure it came from the woodpile


20 posted on 11/04/2021 9:33:18 AM PDT by nevadapatriot
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