Evolution and humans: "Ghost" DNA (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 12, 2018, 19:15 (2232 days ago) @ dhw

Our DNA shows more than Neanderthal and Denisovan:

https://epeak.info/2018/10/10/traces-of-thriller-historic-people-discovered-lurking-in-...

"Prehistoric people had been sexual adventurers, mating with Neanderthals and Denisovans, however DNA research reveal dalliances with populations we by no means knew existed.

"WE LEARN about our ancestors in some ways. Bones inform us what they regarded like. Tooth reveal their eating regimen. Instruments, pots, artwork and different artefacts maintain tales about their tradition. Then, a decade in the past, the primary historic genome was sequenced, opening a complete new window on our previous – one which promised extra intimate insights. The breakthrough famously revealed that Neanderthals bought very cosy with people.

"Since then, geneticists have been probing increasingly fossils for proof of previous cross-species dalliances. The research haven’t upset. However in an intriguing twist, they’ve began to kick up one thing surprising: hidden inside genomes are indicators of ancestors that we by no means knew existed. Geneticists name them “ghosts”. We now have no bodily file of those historic hominins – no bones, no instruments, no archaeological stays in anyway.

"But the genetic code that they left inside fossils of different hominins, and in dwelling people too, is providing profound and unprecedented insights into how our species got here to be, and what the world was like on the time. The concept that every of our cells would possibly comprise fragments of genetic code from extinct species has been round for effectively over a decade.

" Then, in 2008, Svante Pääbo and his group on the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, pulled off the grasp stroke of teasing DNA out of millennia-old Neanderthal bones in portions nice sufficient to sequence. This offered an apparent option to discover out if Homo sapiens had bred with Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis): you might merely look throughout the genomes of dwelling folks for DNA sequences with …"

Comment: Prehistoric sex between hominin types was rampant.