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AI Study of Human Genome Finds Unknown Human Ancestor (smithsonianmag.com)
Zorro shares a report from the Smithsonian: A recent study used machine learning technology to analyze eight leading models of human origins and evolution, and the program identified evidence in the human genome of a "ghost population" of human ancestors. The analysis suggests that a previously unknown and long-extinct group of hominins interbred with Homo sapiens in Asia and Oceania somewhere along the long, winding road of human evolutionary history, leaving behind only fragmented traces in modern human DNA. The study, published in Nature Communications, is one of the first examples of how machine learning can help reveal clues to our own origins. By poring through vast amounts of genomic data left behind in fossilized bones and comparing it with DNA in modern humans, scientists can begin to fill in some of the many gaps of our species' evolutionary history. "The new data suggest that the mysterious hominin was likely descended from an admixture of Neanderthals and Denisovans (who were only identified as a unique species on the human family tree in 2010)," the report adds. "Such a species in our evolutionary past would look a lot like the fossil of a 90,000-year-old teenage girl from Siberia's Denisova cave. Her remains were described last summer as the only known example of a first-generation hybrid between the two species, with a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father."
Yet the only ones to explore the outer reaches of the solar system, walk on the moon, and when you get right down to it; did a lot to make this planet a genuinely comfortable place to call home, and not the feral hellhole that wants to kill you at every turn that it used to be.
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They're really good at beach volleyball.
Ever driven a Saab 900? Notice how, when you pulled up to a stoplight, you couldn't see the fucking thing if it was close because the roof-line extends too far forward? Your Neanderthal girl wouldn't see the ball coming; her giant unibrow would get in the way.