That is a fresh twist on a long-running mystery over the origins of these 28 hominins from Sima de Los Huesos in northern Spain. Initially, researchers in 2013 showed that their maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA was distantly related to Denisovans, extinct relatives of Neanderthals in Asia who lived in Siberia and apparently elsewhere in Asia.
But the finding stirred up quite a debate, since the skeletal remains carry Neanderthal-derived features.
Now, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology managed to sequence nuclear DNA from fossils from the cave.
 |
| To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe. |
“The recovery of a small part of the nuclear genome from the Sima de los Huesos hominins is not just the result of our continuous efforts in pushing for more sensitive sample isolation and genome sequencing technologies”, Meyer adds. “This work would have been much more difficult without the special care that was taken during excavation.”
The researchers credited the breakthrough with advances in analyzing DNA.
“We have hoped for many years that advances in molecular analysis techniques would one day aid our investigation of this unique assembly of fossils,” Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, who has led the excavations at Sima de los Huesos for three decades. “We have thus removed some of the specimens with clean instruments and left them embedded in clay to minimize alterations of the material that might take place after excavation.”
Read more at Discovery News
No comments:
Post a Comment