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Oldest Human DNA Contains Clues To Mysterious Species
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."
1. They had problems with modern human DNA contamination (not sure why they couldn't get everything clean but since they're the leading edge lab in this sort of thing, it must be a real issue).
2. They had to limit analysis to fragment lengths around 45 base pairs to avoid this contamination. That's tiny compared to what one normally uses.
3. They only had enough to sequence the mitochondrial DNA.
4. It's only one person.
So, it's confusing but it seems from the outside to be due to a limited data set. Now, this sort of thing is at the limit of our current technology and the lab is working to replicate and amplify the data (and work on the somatic genome). So stay confused and stay tuned.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That's from the maternal line. It's the DNA that's directly passed down only from the mother. Just because no maternal Neanderthals DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Neanderthals DNA present from Neanderthal fathers. I'm not arguing that this is the answer, only that the findings above don't prohibit this from being true.
Besides, we all know those Neanderthals mean were the one's hitting our ancestral women on the heads, dragging them back their caves, and spreading their DNA. :P
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
"underground cave" is there another kind?
Hominin a subtribe of homonids
Homonids is great apes thus humans gorillas chimpanzea orangutans
Homonin are all those related closer to humans than chimpanzees thus neantherthals etc
Just saying it like it are.
So what exactly is the "clues" that have been gained?
are
Sorry.
So what exactly is the "clues" that are been gained?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
... because hominem is a homonym of hominim.
If I understand the subject correctly: Humans, yes; homo sapiens, no.
That is, 'human' encapsulates more than just us modern homo sapiens, and includes other species of the genus homo, such as homo neanderthalensis (or sub-species homo sapiens neanderthalensis, depending on where you're reading).
We were human 100000 years ago? Weren't we human-LIKE way back then? I mean, denisovians and Neanderthals weren't human, were they?
Well, if you're talking about the conventional usage of "human" in scientific circles, the answer is: Yes, they were; they just weren't modern humans.
But "human" really isn't a technical term; For that you want something like "Homo" or "hominin", depending on how far back in the tree you want to describe. The term "human" is used informally to mean just about any critters later than the split from the Pan (chimpanzee) branch. It's used when you don't want to be too precise about such things.
OTOH, "human" is widely used in common speech to refer to anyone "not like us". Sometimes it means "white people", especially in writings from before the 20th century. But you don't much hear such usages in scientific settings. You do see it a lot in media coverage of science, but then it means whatever the journalist thinks it means.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.