Researchers found proof of Neanderthals reproducing with other species. But the hybrid girl raises more questions than she answers.

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View of the valley from above the Denisova Cave archaeological site, Russia.
B. Viola, MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology

▼ About 90,000 years ago, two people boinked inside of a Russian cave and had a child. Nothing totally unusual about that—except that these two people were from two different species. A new genomic analysis by German researchers shows that a early human bone fragment found in Siberia actually belonged to a female teenager born to a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The findings, reported in the journal Nature on  Wednesday, provide the first known evidence of a direct offspring between these groups, a confirmation of scientists’ strong suspicions that the two species had interbred.
“This is an amazing finding, mainly because there were probably never many of these hybrid individuals around,” says Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus for the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Anthropology, who was not involved with the study. “It’s a bit like winning the lottery.”
Neanderthalsand Denisovans are two of the closest extinct relatives of modern humans. Populations of both species roamed through Europe and Asia, and after the discovery of Denisovans in 2010 in the Denisova cave located in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, analysis indicated they and Neanderthals had split from a common ancestor about 390,000 years ago. The two species were both on their way out of existence roughly 40,000 years ago. Scientists were almost  certain they interbred with each  other as well as with Homo sapien , since the remnants of both  species’ DNA lingers in modern  humans.
The Denisova cave itself has a strange, windy history. Researchers previously found a Neanderthal toe bone estimated to be about 120,000 years old, so the cave probably changed hands rapidly over the years. Researchers have spent quite a bit of time analyzing the genome of the few  Denisovan fossils pulled out from  the cave, which was also home to the hybrid’s bone.
Researchers hailing from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology managed to get ahold of the bone fragment for genomic analysis, and they learned it likely came out of a an arm or a leg, from a female teenager who died when she was around 13 years old. That might not sound like a whole lot, but it’s plenty of information to pull out from an shard barely an inch long.
But the team wasn’t done. After an initial round of analysis on the fragment’s mitochondrial DNA confirmed the bone belonged to an early humanwhose mother was a Neanderthal, scientists started probing the nuclear DNA, which is inherited in equal parts from both mother and father. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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Interesting findings