Oldest Human DNA Contains Clues To Mysterious Species

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 4, 2013 @03:01PM from the family-tree dept.

sciencehabit writes "Analysis of the oldest known genetic material ever to be recovered from an early human reveals an unexpected chapter in the story of human evolution. Researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from the femur of a 400,000-year-old hominin found in the Sima de los Huesos ('pit of bones'), an underground cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. Because the early hominins looked a little like Neanderthals, researchers expected their mitochondrial DNA to share a common ancestor. However, mitochondrial DNA from the Spanish hominin was found to share a common ancestor with an enigmatic eastern Eurasian sister group to the Neanderthals, the Denisovans."

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Re:underground cave... by Nkwe · 2013-12-04 16:14 · Score: 5, Informative

"underground cave" is there another kind?
Man Cave
Re:Very interesting, but by HiChris! · 2013-12-04 16:26 · Score: 5, Informative

No, but Cytosine does - the amine group gets hydrolyzed, leaving a Uracil nucleobase. (Also Thymine is a modified Uracil, it's also know as 5-methyl uracil)