Human evolution: adding to our genome (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 15:01 (15 days ago) @ David Turell

A mysterious group of hominins:

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/mystery-population-of-human-ancestors-gave-us-2...

"The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

"'The fact that we can reconstruct events from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago just by looking at DNA today is astonishing, and it tells us that our history is far richer and more complex than we imagined," study co-author Aylwyn Scally, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

"In a study published Tuesday (March 18) in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers presented a new method of modeling genomic data, called "cobraa," that has allowed them to trace the evolution of modern humans."

Comment: sort of clarifies dhw's question about our origin.