Weย rarely portrayย Neanderthals, our close relatives, as telegenic…But toย mock Neanderthalsย isย to mock ourselves:ย Homo sapiensย had lots of sex withย Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthal genes supply betweenย 1 percent and 4 percentย of the genome in people from homelands on several continents…
DNAย fromย another human-like primate, theย Denisovans, lurks in modern genomes, too.ย A molar and a chip of pinkie bone found in aย Siberian cave provide what little information weย have about this species…Yet aย new study in theย journal Cellย shows the ancient hanky-panky did not stop in Siberia: Humans who traveled across South Asia mated with a separateย group ofย Denisovans, as well.
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Humans and Neanderthals divided into separate groups as far back as 765,000 years ago. Denisovans and Neanderthals were closer cousins who split more recently and then vanished โ perhaps because we absorbed their lineages…
In the new study, [University of Washington biostatistician Sharon R.] Browning and her colleagues examined more than 5,500 genomes of modern humans from Europe, Asia and Oceania, looking for any possible archaic DNA.
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The surprise was a third cluster โ not like the Neanderthal DNA and only partially resembling the Altai Denisovans. This, the authors concluded, was a second and separate pulse of Denisovan genes into the DNA blender.
โThe geography is quite suggestive,โ Browning said. The authors hypothesize that, as ancestral humans migrated eastward, they came across two different Denisovan populations.
Read full, original post: Humans bred with this mysterious species more than once, new study shows
