toe bones of a Neanderthal woman, which was excavated in the Denisova cave in the Russian Altai Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia (photo: dpa). Wednesday 18 December 2013
What can reveal everything a 50,000 years old toe bones! Researchers take him DNA samples and find out. Inbreeding among Neanderthals were not so rare
entrance to the Denisova Cave in Russia . Altai Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia (Photo: AP) Neanderthals in Siberia have also witnessed with closer relatives around 50,000 years ago offspring. The scientists found the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. They base their statements on the study of DNA, which was recovered from a toe bone of a woman. Accordingly, the parents of these women were close relatives. Their study, published experts in the British Journal “Nature”.
“We conducted various inbred scenarios on the computer and discovered that the parents of these Neanderthal woman either half-siblings maternal second cousin and second cousin, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew, grandfather and granddaughter or grandmother and grandson must have been,” said population geneticist Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California at Berkeley (USA), who led a portion of the genome analyzes. Further investigation revealed therefore that the populations of Neanderthals were small and inbreeding occurred more often.
findings on family relationships
Russian scientists had unearthed the tiny bones in 2010 in the Denisova cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains. Studies had already shown a strong link between Neanderthals and modern humans.
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The Neanderthal genome now bring more precise knowledge about the relationships between Neanderthals and living humans and extinct human groups, explained Kay auditors from the Max Planck Institute. “A proportion of about 1.5 to 2.1 percent in the genome of living outside Africa today people comes from Neanderthals.” The new data also showed that about 0.2 percent in the genome of living today mainland Asians and Native Americans are due to the Denisova people. This extinct group is related to the Neanderthals.
High-quality genome sequences revealed, according to the researcher also: The genome of the Denisova people differs from the Neanderthal genome is that it additionally contains the DNA of an unknown representative of the genus Homo. “This old population of hominins existed at a time before Neanderthals, Denisova man and modern humans had separated from each other,” said auditor. “It is possible that it is the human species known as Homo erectus in this unknown hominin.” This must now be investigated further.
Source: n-tv.de
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