Free Republic

Most people alive today carry traces of genes inherited from Neanderthals -- the enduring legacy of prehistoric hookups with our extinct cousins. But researchers have long debated when and where that mingling happened, and whether these were one-off romps or commonplace trysts. Now, an analysis of ancient and modern genomes suggests contemporary people's Neanderthal DNA came from a single, prolonged period of mixing some 47,000 years ago...To do that, Priya Moorjani, a population geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues analyzed previously sequenced genomes from 59 ancient H. sapiens, mostly from Western Europe and Asia, dating from between...

Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species.The ancient humans have been dubbed "Denisovans" after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found. There is also evidence that this population was widespread in Eurasia. A study in Nature journal shows that Denisovans co-existed with Neanderthals and interbred with our species - perhaps around 50,000 years ago. An international group of researchers sequenced a complete genome from one of the ancient hominins (human-like creatures), based on nuclear DNA extracted from a finger bone.