Convoluted human evolution: Timing splits (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 15, 2016, 15:23 (3176 days ago) @ David Turell

The Denisovan Neanderthal split from a common ancestor is re-dated:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45569/title/Clock-Reset-on-Denisovan-Neanderthal-Split/&utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TS_The-Scientist-Daily_2016&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=27288288&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8n8bHTXnHK24l6SlYW2Ay-95IF3uuSsq51EBLj4rmEjhaUw6d2Rq2lu0kRJNIglw62aDocSQtrs8LI-ruxGNiCbUQ8nQ&_hsmi=27288290/-"In this latest study, published today (March 14) in Nature, Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues examined nuclear DNA. The genetic material revealed that the bones were related to Neanderthals, and not Denisovans. However, Meyer and his colleagues wrote in their report, “mitochondrial DNA recovered from one of the specimens shares the previously described relationship to Denisovan mitochondrial DNAs, suggesting, among other possibilities, that the mitochondrial DNA gene pool of Neanderthals turned over later in their history.”-"Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, told Science News that the results place the Denisovan-Neanderthal divergence at about 450,000 years ago. “Research must refocus on fossils from 400,000 to 800,000 years ago to determine which ones might lie on ancestral lineages of Neandertals, Denisovans and modern humans,” he said.-“'It's wonderful news to have mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from something that is 430,000 years old,” Maria Martinón-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College London, told Nature News. “It's like science fiction. It's an amazing opportunity.'”-Comment: Eventually w might work out the bush of human evolution.