High-coverage Neanderthal genome and gene flow with Denisovans
Two new preprints on Neanderthals, A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave and 100,000 years of gene flow between Neandertals and Denisovans in the Altai mountains. The first preprint is an empirical one focused on a new high-coverage Neanderthal genome, which allows for more powerful inferences. To me, the most interesting insight is that Neanderthals […]
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 32: Tibetan Denisovans!
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 32: Tibetan Denisovans!Denisovan MandibleThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Dr. Frido Welker, a pioneer in the field of ancient protein phylogeneti…
Adaptation, the gift of the Denisovans
The Tibetan PlateauThe city of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, is at ~12,000 feet above sea level. For comparison, Denver, Colorado, is on average close to ~5,500 feet above sea level. The “Mile High” city has nothing on Lhasa! But…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 24: Deconstructing the Denisovans
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 24: Deconstructing the DenisovansThe Dali skull, 200,000 years old. A Denisovan?This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) Spencer is back, as we go back to our old two-ma…
Denisovans and the human story
The Siberian cave where a new human species was discoveredWe are all aware of the iconic fossil finds which mark the various milestones of our understanding of human evolution. The story of how our species became what it is today. Raymond Dart’s Taung …
The teleos of modern humans
Next week’s episode of The Insight is going to be on Denisovans. It’s a long one because so much has come out in the last few months on the specific topic, as well as the broader framing issues (e.g., the discovery of a new human species on Luzon). One of the major points Spencer and […]
The teleos of modern humans
Next week’s episode of The Insight is going to be on Denisovans. It’s a long one because so much has come out in the last few months on the specific topic, as well as the broader framing issues (e.g., the discovery of a new human species on Luzon). One of the major points Spencer and […]
Denisovans biogeography is very different from Neanderthals
I want to elaborate on my earlier post, Deep Denisovan Population Structure. Though I don’t put much stock in any particular result, including the most recent ones reported at a conference, I think that biogeography tells us a lot about what we should expect in the future. First, notice that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and European hunter-gatherers […]
Deep Denisovan population structure
The Denisovan session at the American Society of Physical Anthropology meeting was very interesting. In Science Anne Gibbons reports on the findings, Our mysterious cousins—the Denisovans—may have mated with modern humans as recently as 15,000 years ago: The elusive Denisovans, the extinct cousins of Neanderthals, are known from only the scraps of bone they left […]
The sons of Adam: spirit, not blood
Hominin increase in cranial capacity, courtesy of Luke Jostins A few years ago a statistical geneticist at Cambridge’s Sanger Institute, Luke Jostins, posted the chart above using data from fossils on cranial capacity of hominins (the human lineage). As you can see there was a gradual increase in cranial capacity until ~250,000 years before the present, […]
Of beasts and men
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown.” – Genesis 6:4 Th…
Massive Neandertal & Denisovan introgression
Update: John Hawks’ lab is working in the same area, and he disagrees with the specific results presented here. Always reminds you to be careful about sexy results presented at conference! (someone should do a study!)
So claimed Peter Parham at a…
The paradigm is dead, long live the paradigm!
Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution: Mitochondrial DNA from 147 people, drawn from five geographic populations have been analysed by restriction mapping. All these mitochondrial DMAs stem from one woman who is postulated to have lived ab7out 200,000 years ago, probably in Africa. All the populations examined except the African population have multiple origins, implying that […]