Scientists Recover First Genome of Ancient Human

On October 8, 2015, a group of scientists recovered the first genome of an ancient human from Ethiopia. The DNA from the Ethiopian human is shockingly different than that of current day Africans still residing in the country.  Because the DNA is so different, scientists concluded that an ancient human had migrated from the vast East and that the group of humans had been scattered across the continent. The place where the fossil was found implies Eurasian Migration in ancient times. Joseph Prickell, an ancient DNA expert from the New York Genome Center says that this discovery "is a major milestone for the field." 

For years, scientists had doubted that any DNA could be recovered from ancient remains, but with this finding, there is hope that much older remains can have DNA extracted from them. Few scientists thought it possible to extract DNA from a fossil due to the fact that all other remains would quickly be wiped out by bacteria and fungi. In many cases, scientists were unable to retrieve any DNA at all from ancient humans. The conditions in which many fossils were found were in the tropic, where the moist environment would also contribute to the wiping out of any genetic materials. However, in recent years, it was discovered that ear bones preserve their genetic material even when all other bones have lost theirs.

This could potentially mean that there could be more humanoid and ancient human DNA discoveries if fossils are to be found intact. This gives hope for the field, and may provide some insight on more specifics when it comes to the sequence in which macroevolution occurred. Hopefully this will become another stepping stone in science's explanation of macroevolution and will also provide more evidence on how a species can change over long periods of time. I believe this genome will allow scientists to understand the way genes can mutate and change and will additionally help scientists to understand how much genetic variation had to occur in order to get to the current human genome. 

The original article can be found here. 

An article on the potential Eurasian migration can be found here.