Deep inside the Atapuerca cave system in northern Spain, 30 metres beneath the surface, lies the Sima de los Huesos, or the “pit of bones”. The remains of at least 28 ancient humans have been found at the bottom of this 12-metre-long vertical shaft. Now a thigh bone pulled out of the pit has yielded 400,000-year-old DNA – by far the oldest human DNA ever sequenced.
The results suggest the thigh bone belonged to a previously unknown human species – perhaps even a missing link between the Neanderthals and their mysterious cousins the Denisovans. This, say palaeontologists, brings us closer than ever before to understanding who our own common ancestor with the Neanderthals was.
Read the full, original story here: Oldest human genome dug up in Spain’s pit of bones
