Traces of long-lost human cousins may be hiding in modern people’s DNA, a new computer analysis suggests.
People from Melanesia, a region in the South Pacific encompassing Papua New Guinea and surrounding islands, may carry genetic evidence of a previously unknown extinct hominid species….
That species is probably not Neanderthal or Denisovan, but a different, related hominid group, said [Ryan] Bohlender, a statistical geneticist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “We’re missing a population or we’re misunderstanding something about the relationships,” he said.
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While investigating the Denisovan discrepancy, Bohlender and colleagues came to the conclusion that a third group of hominids may have bred with the ancestors of Melanesians….
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[Mattias Jakobsson, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden] says he wouldn’t be surprised if there were other groups of extinct hominids that mingled with humans. “Modern humans and archaic humans have met many times and had many children together,” he said.The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Evidence of Unknown Extinct Human Relative Found in DNA Study of Melanesians
