A ‘Denisovan’ genetic history of recent human evolution
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anthropology, Evolutionary Studies, Genetics, Genomics, Paleontology
- Keywords
- archaic introgression, human evolution, Denisova, genetics
- Copyright
- © 2019 Teixeira et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. A ‘Denisovan’ genetic history of recent human evolution. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27526v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27526v1
Abstract
As anatomically modern humans (AMH) migrated out of Africa and around the rest of the world, they met and interbred with multiple extinct hominid species. The traces of genetic input from these past interbreeding events, recorded in the genomes of modern populations, have created a powerful record of recent human migrations. The first of these events occurred between Neandertals, and a small group of AMH shortly after they left Africa, somewhere in western Eurasia around 55-50 ka, and left a genomic signal of about 2% Neandertal DNA that was subsequently spread across the rest of the world. In contrast to the Neandertals, the interbreeding events with other extinct hominid groups – such as the Denisovans, the east Eurasian sister group of Neandertals – remain poorly understood, but are potentially far more complex.
Author Comment
This manuscript was submitted to PeerJ Preprints as an Opinion article.