New Roots For African Humans
The ancestors of modern humans once shared the world outside Africa with ancient human species such as the Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, as well as the Denisovans, which might have once roamed a vast range stretching from Siberia to Southeast Asia. Now we learn that African also bred with our relatives. A protein that helps make human spit slimy reveals signs that the ancestors of modern humans in Africa interbred with an extinct human lineage that was an even more distant relation than Neanderthals, a new study finds. “About 5 to 7 percent of every population in sub-Saharan Africa has this divergent protein,” said Omer Gokcumen, study co-senior author of the new study and an evolutionary genomicist at the University at Buffalo in New York.
The scientists detailed their findings online July 21 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.