Hominins

Blogs about hominins

A schematic of the various evolutionary patterns of Homo sapiens including also an interbreeding with Neanderthals

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports a study that relaunches the idea that the Homo sapiens species emerged not from a single population that had e linear evolution but from different groups of genetically similar hominins that diversified and then interbred again. A team of researchers led by Brenna Henn of the University of California-Davis, USA, and Simon Gravel of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, conducted a genetic analysis and a comparison with early Homo sapiens fossils to try and locate the origin of modern humans. The researchers tested different evolutionary and migratory models and the one that best matches the data points to ramifications of African populations that subsequently interbred again until they merged.

Chagyrskaya Cave (Photo ©Bence Viola. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of a genetic study on a Neanderthal community that lived in today’s Siberia. A team of researchers including Nobel Prize winner for medicine Svante Pääbo obtained DNA from 11 individuals who lived in Chagyrskaya Cave and 2 who lived in Okladnikov Cave. It’s one of the largest genetic studies on Neanderthals ever done. The results of the genetic analysis indicate that some of the inhabitants of Chagyrskaya Cave were closely related, including a father and daughter.

Views of the molar TNH2-1

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An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports the discovery in today’s Laos of a tooth that was attributed to a little girl that belonged to the Denisovan species, an archaic human species still mysterious in many ways. The molar was dated between 164,000 and 131,000 years ago from the analysis of the sediments in which it was found in the Cobra Cave (Tam Ngu Hao 2), in the Annamite Chain, in Laos. The warm and humid conditions in that area offer little hope of still finding pieces of DNA but the proteins and appearance of the molar, very similar to that of a jawbone discovered in Tibet and attributed to a Denisovan, led the researchers to that conclusion.

The vertebra found in the Ubeidiya site

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An article published in the journal “Scientific Reports” reports the attribution of a vertebra to the genus Homo with an estimated age of about 1.5 million years in the archaeological site of Ubeidiya, in today’s Israel. A team of researchers examined the fossil vertebra and compared it with other Eurasian hominin fossils from the Pleistocene period. The paleobiological differences led them to conclude that there were several migratory waves from Africa that correspond to the different stone working techniques discovered in archaeological studies.

Sediment from Denisova Cave (Photo courtesy Mike Morley)

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An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” reports the discovery of DNA of ancient hominins and animals dating back to the Pleistocene period in sediments taken from 13 prehistoric sites on different continents. A team of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and geoarchaeologists collected and analyzed sediments and found that even microscopic fragments of bone and feces offer concentrations of DNA belonging to various species. That’s another step forward in the recovery of very ancient genetic material that can offer valuable information on populations of Neanderthals and other hominins whose presence can be linked to archaeological artifacts and ecological traces.