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Neanderthal genes found in some modern humans
Friday, 7 May 2010
by Meghan Miner
SYDNEY: As humans migrated out of Africa 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, some individuals interbred with Neanderthal and as a result some genetic sequences can be found in all non-African humans, according to an international team of scientists.
"It's cool to think that some of us have a little Neanderthal DNA in us," said Svante Pääbo from the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, lead author of the study published in Science.
Non-Africans are more closely related to Neanderthal. This, they suggest, is because the inter-species liaisons most likely occurred in the Middle East 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, after non-Africans migrated out of Africa.
Neanderthals went extinct 30,000 years ago
Neanderthal, a hominid species that became extinct around 30,000 years ago stood about 1.62 m high and had heads large enough to house human-sized brains.
Neanderthal were once thought to be sub-species of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), but in this study, which looked at 1.1 billion DNA fragments from the Neanderthal genome, researchers confirm they were a separate species ( Homo neanderthalensis ).
Because humans and Neanderthal are our closest relatives evolutionarily, the Neanderthal genome has helped to identify some of the genetic material that has arisen since the two species split.
Uniquely human genes discovered
According to the paper, some of those exclusively human genes are those that code for cognitive development (mutations of which cause diseases such as autism and schizophrenia) and energy metabolism.
There's also genes that code for skeletal development - parts of the skeleton like the cranium, clavicle and ribcage, that make us morphologically different from Neanderthals and apes.
The researchers used small amounts of bone powder from three 40,000-year-old Neanderthal individuals found in a cave in Croatia to build 60% of the genome, enough to announce that the genome is complete.
DNA used from five humans
Correcting for a sample bias in the genetic databases of modern humans, the researchers sequenced DNA from five different individuals from different regions around the world: Southern Africa, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, China and France.
When the researchers compared the genomes of the five modern day humans to the Neanderthal, they found that the non-African genomes were more similar to Neanderthals than the African genomes.
Because these similarities are present in the genomes of the individuals from China, Papua New Guinea and France, this suggests that human and Neanderthal interbreeding took place when they shared a common ancestor - after the migration out of Africa.
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This originally blew my mind when I first heard of this; Brings a whole new meaning to humnoid and species. Raises question of Darwinism and evolution concerning humanity.
Although least surprising was the fact that Neaderthals had Red hair and larger physical specimens, stronger physical specimens.
But the interesting part is looking at Neaderthal Religion.