Researchers havemanaged to sequencea section of the old human DNA ever , take from the 430,000 - yr - old teeth and second joint bones of fossils found in northern Spain . What they ’ve beenable to determinefrom this telling feat could rewrite the evolutionary tree of ancient human species , include those that finally gave ascension to us .
Starting in 1997 , archaeologists have excavated the remains of around 28 skeletons thought to escort to around 430,000 year one-time from a cave in northern Spain known as Sima de los Huesos , or “ pit of os . ” The skulls of these individual appear to show the start of the formation of a heavy brow ridge , and so it was thought that they represented betimes Neanderthals , who would eventually evolve into the in full recognized species100,000 years later .
But novel evidence , published inNature , from sequence persona of the fossil ’s nuclear desoxyribonucleic acid suggests that these were not former ancestors to the specie at all , but were amply recognized Neanderthals . If pushing Neanderthal origins back by 100,000 years was n’t enough , the new enquiry also shew that Neanderthals and another specie of closely pertain human – known as the Denisovans ( who subsist in southern Siberia thousands of kilometers forth ) – had already vary when the Neanderthals were buried at Sima de los Huesos .
If these finding are correct , then this is sinful , as it could campaign back the time when our own ancestors are opine to have split from Neanderthals and Denisovans by hundreds of thousands of days . This is because using genetic studies , it was previously cerebrate that our ancestors dissever from the Neanderthal - Denisovan ancestor between 315,000 and 540,000 years ago . But if to the full formed Neanderthals already existed 430,000 years ago , it intend the rip from our ancestors was much to begin with , perhapsas early as 750,000years ago , hint the researcher .
This has profound implications for our own beginning . It means that the likely funny species that was thought to have leave rise to us , Homo heidelbergensis , plausibly was n’t our ancestor , as the species was not thought to have evolved until 50,000 year after modern humans and Neanderthal - Denisovans diverged . This means that the likely culprit to have give ascent to all three species might well have been another little get laid specie calledHomo antecessor , described from remains also find out in Spain , but this fourth dimension see to 900,000 years honest-to-god .
As if this web of early human coinage was n’t complicated enough , there are further questions that need to be solve . For exemplar , while the nuclear DNA taken from the Sima de los Huesos dodo showed that the pearl were Neanderthal , some of the mitochondrial DNA that is ascertain in other parts of the cell seem to show that at least one of the 28 person was related to the Denisovans . How this came to be is still a closed book , and could make up grounds of an strange mintage of human migrating from Africa to Eurasia . Until more fossils are found , all one can do is speculate .
range of a function in text : One of the 28 frame discovered in the Sima de los Huesos , now believe to be Neanderthals . © Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films
