Fossil finger bone yields genome of a previously unknown human relative
Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - 16:11
in Paleontology & Archaeology
A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives who may have lived throughout much of Asia during the late Pleistocene epoch. Although the fossil evidence consists of just a bone fragment and one tooth, DNA extracted from the bone has yielded a draft genome sequence, enabling scientists to reach some startling conclusions about this extinct branch of the human family tree, called 'Denisovans' after the cave where the fossils were found...