Scientists Stunned by a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave
The extraordinary find is rewriting the story of archaic and modern humans
A single cave in the mountains of Siberia has produced a string of remarkable archaeological discoveries. In 2008, scientists there found a 41,000-year-old pinky bone, whose DNA matched neither humans nor Neanderthals. Instead, it belonged to a previously unknown group of hominins they named Denisovans. Three Denisovan teeth also turned up in the cave. Since then, traces of Denisovan DNA have been found in humans living today in Asia and Melanesia—suggesting that long ago, humans and Denisovans met, had sex, and had children.
That was, until now, the sum total of our knowledge on the mysterious Denisovans.
A remarkable new discovery—also in the Denisova cave—paints an even more interesting picture, telling us that Denisovans also interbred with Neanderthals. The evidence is as direct as it can be: a bone fragment in the cave that, according to DNA analysis, belonged to the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
“It’s an amazing, lucky thing to find this individual, wow!” says David Reich. “Who could have imagined we could have been able to witness the hybridization of these two groups basically as it was happening.” Reich, an ancient-DNA researcher at Harvard, was not involved in the study, though he has collaborated with the group on other samples from the Denisova cave.
theatlantic.com
archive.is
