About 90.000 years ago, a girl lived in the Altai Mountains, a remote area located in present-day Russia. The young she died when she was only 13 and her bones remained hidden in a cave. Analyzing them, scientists have made an exceptional discovery: she was in fact the daughter of an unconventional couple formed by two now extinct hominids, a Neanderthal and a Denisova
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About 90.000 years ago, a girl lived in the Altai Mountains, a remote area located in present-day Russia. The young she died when she was only 13 and her bones remained hidden in a cave. Analyzing them, scientists have made an exceptional discovery: she was in fact the daughter of an unconventional couple made up of two now extinct hominids, a Neanderthal and a Denisova.
As the researchers describe in a study published in Nature, the girl, known as Denisova 11, is the first direct evidence that these ancient and distinct species of hominids had children. Their mating had only been hypothesized but so far it had never been genetically confirmed.
All that remained of Denisova 11 was a single bone fragment, found by Russian archaeologists in the Denisova cave in 2012. Yet from this single bone it was possible to reconstruct thousands of years of human history.
"Finding a first generation person of mixed descent from these groups is absolutely extraordinary", he said population geneticist Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
The team, led by paleogenicists Viviane Slon and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, conducted genome analysis on a single bone fragment recovered from the cave from which Denisova's Homo was named. , a group of extinct humans first identified in 2008.
Scientists already knew that the Denisovas and Neanderthals lived together but no one had ever found the offspring of the first generation born from such matings. Pääbo even questioned the data when colleagues first shared it.
Pääbo's team first discovered Denny's remains several years ago, examining a collection of more than 2.000 bone fragments. In a 2016 paper, they used radiocarbon dating to determine if the bone belonged to a hominid that lived more than 50.000 years ago, but subsequent genetic analysis returned the sample to be around 90.000 years old. They then sequenced the mitochondrial DNA and compared the data with sequences from other humans. Analysis showed that the sample's mitochondrial DNA came from a Neanderthal. This type of DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother and represents only a line of inheritance, leaving the identity of the father unknown.
In the latest study, the team sought to gain a clearer understanding of the specimens' ancestors by sequencing their genome and comparing the DNA variation with that of other hominids. About 40% of the sample DNA fragments matched Neanderthal DNA, but another 40% matched Denisovan. By sequencing the sex chromosomes, the researchers also determined that the fragment came from a female, and the thickness of the bone suggested she was at least 13 years old.
With an equal amount of Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA, the sample appeared to have a parent for each group of hominids. The researchers deduced that the girl's mother was genetically closer to the Neanderthals living in Western Europe than the Neanderthals who lived earlier in the Denisova cave, while her father was a Denisova.
"The results convincingly demonstrate that the specimen is a first-generation hybrid," says Kelley Harris, a population geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle who studied hybridization between early humans and Neanderthals. “It is a truly striking case. I think it will enter textbooks right away. "
The study was published in Nature.
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Francesca Mancuso
Photo: Nature
