Tuesday, January 31, 2012

New Human Origins Discovered?



An article in the New York Times tells the story of a pinky finger found in a Siberian Cave.  According to the article the tip of the finger found is about 40,000 years old and gives insight to a new origin of humans.  The bone of the girl's pinky was genetically sequenced, from which scientists concluded that the finger belonged to a group known as Denisovans, who lived in Asia and vanished about 30,000 years ago.  According to a paper published in the science journal Nature, after sequencing of the genome it has been noted that this group does share a common origin with Neanderthals, however, they were not involved in the gene flow from Neanderthals into Eurasians.  Based on the two articles and the evidence presented I do not believe there is enough evidence to gather any concrete conclusion or suggest that the Denisovans are part of the human origin.

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