12 May 2010 by Ewen Callaway
Magazine issue 2760.
A LONG-awaited rough draft of the Neanderthal genome has revealed that our own DNA contains clear evidence that early humans interbred with Neanderthals.
Such interminglings have been suspected in the past, but there's more: Neanderthals were probably not the only other Homo species early Homo sapiens mixed with.
These findings call into question the familiar story that modern humans left Africa around 100,000 years ago and swept aside all other Homo species as they made their way around the globe. "It was a very simple story," says João Zilhão at the University of Bristol, UK. "Its simplicity suggested it would not be true." A more likely scenario is that as H. sapiens migrated, they met and interbred with other Homo species that have all since died out.
The first definitive evidence of interbreeding comes from Svante Pääbo's team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. They reported last week that the genome of humans today is roughly 1 to 4 per cent Neanderthal (Science, vol 328, p 710). This holds true for all non-Africans, suggesting that H. sapiens and Neanderthals interbred sometime between 100,000 and 45,000 years ago, after the first humans left Africa but before they split into regional populations.
Another genetic study confirms this. Jeffrey Long at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque presented results from nearly 100 modern human populations at a meeting of the American Association for Physical Anthropologists in April. His team found evidence that Eurasians acquired genetic diversity from breeding with other Homo species after they left Africa.
...
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: New Scientist
+++++
SEM COMENTÁRIO!!!
+++++
Vote neste blog para o prêmio TOPBLOG 2010.
+++++
SEM COMENTÁRIO!!!
+++++
Vote neste blog para o prêmio TOPBLOG 2010.
