Denisovan ancestors of the Iceland population
Last week in Nature, Laurits Skov and collaborators from Aarhus University and from Kari Stefansson’s research group in Iceland gave a high-resolution look a...
All posts tagged with Denisovans
Nuclear insertions of mitochondrial DNA from Denisovans
A paper last week by Robert Bücking and coworkers trawled through the recently-sequenced Indonesian Genome Diversity Project dataset looking for snippets of ...
Are three-rooted molars evidence of Denisovan introgression in Asia?
During the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of multiregional evolution of modern humans was based upon the observation that today’s people living in various regions...
Can methylation of DNA in ancient bones really predict the morphology of Denisovans?
Last week, Cell published a new paper by David Gokhman and coworkers that tries to infer the skeletal form of Denisovans from signatures of methylation in th...
How will ancient proteins change paleoanthropology?
Nature has a news feature by Matthew Warren that provides a nice background to recent work on proteomics of fossil hominins: “Move over, DNA: ancient protein...
A Denisovan news article
A nice article by Ewen Callaway has just come out in Nature looking at the current scientific scene regarding the mysterious Denisovans: “Siberia’s ancient g...
Link: Three big insights into our African origins
Recently, I delivered a lecture to the American Society for Human Genetics, focusing on the African record of human origins. It was a great privilege to spea...
ZooMS finds more Denisovans
A nice news article in Nature about the “zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry”, or ZooMS work being done at Denisova Cave by Katerina Douka and coworkers: “De...
What explains mtDNA introgression among archaic human populations?
In case anyone still wonders how variation in mitochondria might have been important to Neandertals and other archaic humans:
How long ago did Neandertals and Denisovans part ways?
We have learned an immense amount about Neandertal population history from their genomes. But many old questions and some new ones remain unanswered.
Should we be surprised that Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans didn’t form stable hybrid zones?
We’ve come a long way toward recognizing the complexity of modern human origins and dispersal. Ten years ago, I was one of a relative few who still maintaine...
Another Denisovan from Denisova Cave
Denisova Cave is one of the most fascinating places in the story of human origins. The cave is in the northern wall of the Anuy River valley, within the Alta...
Link: The futility of science communication conferences
Rich Borschelt is the communication director for science at the Department of Energy, and recently attended a science communication workshop. He describes at...
Link: Extinction of other human species
Melissa Hogenboom of BBC Earth asks, “Why are we the only human species still alive?” The article features Jean-Jacques Hublin, John Shea and Nicholas Conard...
Coming: ‘First Peoples’ on PBS
This month, PBS in the United States will be premiering a new five-part series on the origins and spread of modern humans around the world, called First Peop...
An archaic human from the bed of the Taiwan Strait
From the bottom of the sea this week comes another new fossil hominin. The specimen is a partial mandible, described in Nature Communications, by Chun-Hsiang...
Hunting the Denisovan belt
The other day I was having a long conversation about Denisovans and human origins. My friend suggested that “Denisovans” sound like some kind of Star Trek ci...
Denisovans and the Middle Paleolithic of India
Sheila Mishra and colleagues have a new paper discussing the antiquity of microblade industries in India, focusing on the site of Mehtakheri in Madhya Prades...
New Denisova and Neandertal DNA results reported
Elizabeth Pennisi reports from the Biology of Genomes conference at Cold Spring Harbor, New York: “More Genomes From Denisova Cave Show Mixing of Early Human...
Geno2 users showing unexpected Denisovan ancestry
I have been excited to hear in the last few days from several readers who have gotten results from the new Genographic Geno2 genotyping chip. One aspect of t...
Mailbag: Where did Neanderancestors live?
Re: European Middle Plesitocene (via Twitter):
Did Denisovans have genetic adaptations to high altitude?
We don’t really know the extent of territory that might have been occupied by the population represented by the Denisova genome. The signs of mixture into th...
The immune systems of archaic humans
I’ve just submitted an abstract for a conference in the fall, with the title, “Immunogenetics of archaic humans.”