400,000-Year-Old DNA Could Hold The Secrets Of Human Origin
Dec 06, 2013 20:41
The DNA was extracted from human remains found deep in the Pit of Bones. The bones are believed to be 400 hundred-thousand-year-old (the previous oldest human DNA ever sequenced was only 100,000 years old).
The bones were originally thought to belong to ancient relatives of Neanderthals, a species of ancient hominin on a different branch of the evolutionary tree than our ancestors.
After using a completely new technique to isolate the DNA from a thigh bone, the feedback seems to have raised more questions than answers.
Based on the DNA isolated from these ancient bones suggests, there could have been many more species of ancient humans than we thought.
"Right now, we've basically generated a big question mark," study researcher Matthias Meyer, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "It's extremely hard to make sense of," he added, "We still are a bit lost here."
Read the full story over at the New York Times.
The bones were originally thought to belong to ancient relatives of Neanderthals, a species of ancient hominin on a different branch of the evolutionary tree than our ancestors.
After using a completely new technique to isolate the DNA from a thigh bone, the feedback seems to have raised more questions than answers.
Based on the DNA isolated from these ancient bones suggests, there could have been many more species of ancient humans than we thought.
"Right now, we've basically generated a big question mark," study researcher Matthias Meyer, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "It's extremely hard to make sense of," he added, "We still are a bit lost here."
Read the full story over at the New York Times.
