Scientists Stunned By a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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 more 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 Denisova cave.
So surprising was the find that Viviane Slon didn’t believe her results at first. “My first reaction was, ‘What did I do wrong?’” says Slon, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. Ancient DNA is notoriously finicky. Because the old genetic material is so degraded and fragmented, it is easy to get tantalizing but false results. She repeated her experiments, again and again, extracting DNA six separate times. “It’s really when we saw this over and over again we realized, in fact, it was mixed Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry,” she says. © Provided by Atlantic Media Company
Neanderthals and Denisovans split off from each other some 400,000 years ago, making them far more distinct than any two groups of modern humans living today. Yet both appeared to have lived in or around Denisova Cave. In 2010, excavators also found a Neanderthal toe bone in Denisova Cave . This new bone fragment—from the daughter of a Neanderthal and Denisova—suggests the two groups not only inhabited the same place but at the same time.
Russian scientists first excavated this sliver of bone in 2012. It was one of more than 2,000 fragments that Slon’s collaborators at Oxford analyzed using a protein called collagen. The collagen in this one, they realized, was of human-like origin, so then sent it to the ancient DNA lab at Max Planck for extraction. The inch-long fragment is too small to even tell to which bone it came from. Nevertheless, it yielded a wealth of genomic information.
The daughter herself was a mix of Neanderthal and Denisovan. Her mother’s half of the genome most resembled DNA from a Neanderthal found in Croatia . It did not particularly match DNA from the Neanderthal actually found right in the Denisova cave in 2010, suggesting that Neanderthals migrated west to east in multiple waves. Her father’s Denisovan half of the genome actually had a touch of Neanderthal DNA—suggesting he too had a Neanderthal ancestor hundreds of generations ago. And somehow, 50,000 years ago or more, her mother and father met. The proof is in her DNA.
The discovery has stunned scientists, but it also has them questioning whether it is so stunning at all. Svante Pääbo, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, recalls sequencing a 40,000-year-old human in Romania, which turned out to have a Neanderthal ancestor just four to six generations back . Interbreeding is so rare, he thought at the time, that the discovery of such a recent ancestor must just be a fluke. But after sequencing just six individuals from Denisova cave, they have already found a direct hybrid offspring. Maybe it was not so uncommon after all.
“When you find a needle in a haystack, you have to start wondering if what you’re really looking at is a needlestack,” John Hawks , an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in an email. “This genome shows that hybrids were nowhere near as rare as people have been assuming. They must have been really common.”
Prior to the advent of ancient DNA, the idea that humans and Neanderthals mated was controversial. Now, ancient DNA shows that humans not only mated with Neanderthals but also Denisovans, and Denisovans and Neanderthals with each other. As these groups roamed Eurasia hundreds of years ago, they met and had children—over and over again, it seems.
After the discovery of the bone fragment, a colleague of Slon’s who dabbles in graphic design, drew an illustration of a girl holding hands with her Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father looking out of the cave. The study’s authors conceded that there is no way to know if this peaceful coexistence is an accurate representation. When I asked Pääbo about it, he said, “I will try to avoid the question by saying how we speculate about back then says much more about our ideas about humans and our fantasies and fascinations than anything about what happened back then.” But he added, when humans interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, their children survived and passed on their genes. “It can’t be they were total outcasts,” he says, because their descendants still walk among us today.
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Even though we've known about other homo species for quite awhile I'm still amazed that up until relatively recently there were 4 (maybe more?) of us wandering around this planet at the same time.
Amazing discovery...Seems that the more we learn we find that we know little of the vast peopling of the planet..
(maybe more?) I wouldn't take a bet against that...
Octopi are from Mars........
Hu.. So is there no other living creature on this planet of the same type of DNA structure ?
What about similure animals ? Are they more "earthly" ? Like a squid for instance.
I find this just weird to say the least.
All kinds of things have a more complex genome than humans, including the single-cell eukaryote "polychaos dubium" which has 670 billion base pairs, roughly 200 times the size of the human genome. But that doesn't make it alien.
The marbled lungfish also has a huge genome, about 133 billion base pairs.
I cannot find it on the internet, ( too lazy ) but we did see something recently on 1122 ( BBC )
taht a percentage of the Octupuses DNA is unique to them alone, so that DNA either came to earth from somewhere else, or
( more likely ) survived one of the earth's previous kill offs ( ice ages, meteor strikes or mega volcanic events that killed almost, but not quite, everything.
Well any creature with three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood sure sounds like something right out of a sifi flick it having alien DNA doesn't sound too damn far fetched I guess.
taht a percentage of the Octupuses DNA is unique to them alone,
As the church lady would say, "O.... That's quite different.. never mind."
Thanks for replying, I probably would have thought about this later and it would have drove me nuts.
But I too am too lazy to google it.. so thanks.
lol
Teach it to work at a help desk and you can get rid of the rest of the staff.
Never mind. Keep that to yourself. Don't give anybody any ideas.
Too late, you got my mind churning.
Cephalopods aren't alien but they do use DNA & RNA differently than vertebrates do. That's not the only thing that makes them interesting from an evolutionary point of view but it's a biggie. The full article is worth a read:
Ms Octopus couldn't do any worse than the help desk I deal with now. And she's got nine more brains than our help desk staff
Although I have come across many very helpful help desks, there are those times...
One of the reasons I love science is the more you learn, the more questions are raised, which leads to more learning, etc, etc.
Isn't that the case. The ground work laid the last couple hundred years is beginning to payoff. One of those payoffs is learning how much further there is to go.
Indeed. it also offers an insight to the human evolutionary path.
One of the things that's always fascinated me is how the different races developed. Was it because of environment? Why do Asian people look so different than Caucasian people? Is it because of climate and topography differences?
That's the prevailing idea. Just like northern Europeans became more fair skinned than their tropical region counterparts: less exposure to direct sunlight.
But why the eye differences? Why do Europeans have round eyes as opposed to the more "slanted" eye of Asians? I can't think of a better word that's why it's in quotes and I hope I didn't offend anyone
While the appearance is "slanted," it's not really. It's thought that Asians have the epicanthic fold (skin that covers the inner corner of the eye, giving the "slant' appearance) to protect their eyes from the snow and cold of the mountainous regions where they live. Without it, their eyes would be more vulnerable to the harsh weather conditions of the mountains and subject them to a higher risk of eye injury or snow blindness, which would diminish their probability of survival. This feature would become prominent in a group very quickly, given that people in the region lived in small tribes or communities.
That's racist! LOL, just kidding
Just didn;t want to be an asshole this morning.
Thanks for that explanation! That makes a lot of sense.
Almond shaped....that's the word I should have used
Must...resist...urge...to make...snarky...remark. Lol
Happy to help.
That's only...slightly better than "slanted."
Don't resist on my account. <snicker>
That's ok. I'll take the rare highroad on this one.
If humans had the RNA editing abilities of certain cephalopods then they could dynamically adjust their epicanthic fold as the current conditions require. Maybe that's in our future?
That would be nice. I hate when a biting wind cuts my eyeballs
Ok, why do I have red (actually more bronze) skin and slanted almond eyes. And they are blue eyes. Only between 5 and 8 % of the world population has blue eyes and a hell of a lot less than 5 to 8% of Indians have blue eyes. Is it possible that there may have been a Viking sneaking around, or a native that invaded Scandinavia. Oh my, the possibilities are endless.
With the discovery of ''Montana Boy'' 12,500 years old the direct connection was made that the Clovis people and the modern Native are related.
Now we have to figure our why certain parts of our DNA is directly linked to Siberia.
Be careful, I just might start speaking in tongues.
About the eyes, I might be able to talk about that.
There are strong suspicions that Green, Blue and Hazel (often Grey) eyes are a Neanderthal trait.
My European grandfather had grey eyes, my aunt on the side had grey eyes, my sister has blue eyes.
We may all share Neanderthal genes.
Of the beautiful "Girls" in my avatar, Julia with coal black hair has deep emerald green eyes. Irina with the flaxen hair and deep blue eyes.
Among of genetic possibilities there may be a good chance we are all Neanderthal cousins.
He's a witch!
.
Just wait a few more years.....someone will find a way to verify that 130K BCE date from the San Diego area.....then you'll have some real competition for First People.
LMAO, I think that you mean shape shifter.
OMG, my great great great grand parents are rolling over in the grave...LOL
Ha, yeah that is one interesting dig going on in San Diego...We shall see, but I'm going with my grandfathers truth...''We have always been here''....
I wonder what kind of human those early San Diegans will turn out to be. Most likely frat boys.
Nah, they must be proto-moondoggies.
It also might be a Denisovan trait, we actually know very little about them
That could be true.
Beach Party Bingo does sound kinda cool 130,000 years ago...I'll bet it was all long boards then.
I don't know, the Neanderthals were known to have worked with composites. Surfboard tech may be one of those lost ancient technologies.
We do know that they had fingers and teeth.
In fact it was either something like that or moss rafts.
hmmmm? Looks like Chimor technology.
It does, doesn't it.
Are you supposed to sit in those and paddle? Or are they part of an outrigger?
Sit in them and paddle, Shrekk.
These are from Peru and I believe they may be fashioned after the Chimor people who were experts in reed boats of all kinds. They ruled the coast of Peru from around 850 AD to 1450 AD.
These types of reed boats are still used in Peru.
It really does.
At first I thought maybe Tiahuanaco. After thinking about it the Tiahuanaco boats are more symmetric bow to stern. Similar in shape but vastly smaller than what may be familiar to most, the Viking Long boats. Though the long boats came much later.
Also the Tiahuanaco boats were lighter in construction and not built for the rugged surf.
I hope those ancient Peruvians were smart enough to wear PFDs!
I'm sure that they did...
As a side note Phil Buck had the Aymara Indians of Peru built a 60 foot reed boat that he sailed from Chile to Australia.
He's sort of a modern day Thor Heyerdahl.
I think that your correct, dave.
Didn't that expedition get scuttled before launch or did he actually make it?
It was another one that was scuttled when the boat was damaged...This one I think went ahead, but I'm not positive.
Just goggled it and can't find anything that confirms the voyage was made.
I couldn't find anything to confirm that it happened. If I were organizing that I'd want to be sure to get it right.
But he added, when humans interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, their children survived and passed on their genes. “It can’t be they were total outcasts,” he says, because their descendants still walk among us today.
Well that certainly explains a lot.
It certainly adds to our genetic knowledge, however it does not in any way provide a rationale to demean any group of people we don't like in this day and age.
O I certainly agree.
I was just thinking of some individuals I've known.
Now maybe I can quit shaking my head when they come to mind.
lol
Co-workers....
Among others !
family members.....
LOL again, Among others.
lol
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Yep, for sure some and the list goes on .
Damn I hate it when that happens.
Enjoyed this article.
The past few years there has been speculation of such finds and bingo all at once it's a home run with 3 runners on base.
Siberia has been rich in findings in recent years.
I believe it was Siberia where a Neanderthal grave site was discovered in a cave showing signs of ceremony. This was an eye opener which moved the previously held ideas to the side. Since then, more has been uncovered which goes contrary to previous brutish "cave man" perceptions of the Neanderthal. Turns out they even had composites.
It's interesting how much has been learned from the Denisova cave site based just on a few tooth and bone fragments and good DNA extraction & analysis. There probably are or were many more isolated sites like this which have been destroyed before we even invented the techniques to analyze them.
Agree, what a golden find and it is amazing how the science continues to advance to let us see the fine details.
Hopefully, there will be more caves. The Siberian locations may be a big contributor to the preservation of these caves.
Thanks I thought it was cool as well when I stumbled upon it