Ancient DNA puts a face on the mysterious Denisovans, extinct cousins of Neanderthals.

Pedro_P

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This artist's reconstruction, based on anatomical estimates from a new method, shows the face of a Denisovan girl from Siberia in Russia.MAAYAN HAREL
▼ Many of us can picture the face of a Neanderthal, with its low forehead, beetled brows, and big nose. But until now, even scientists could only guess at the features of the extinct Denisovans, who once thrived across Asia. For more than 10 years, these close cousins of Neanderthals have been identified only by their DNA in a handful of scrappy fossils.
Now, a new method has given the Denisovans a face. A recently developed way to glean clues about anatomy from ancient genomes enabled researchers to piece together a rough composite of a young girl who lived at Denisova Cave in Siberia in Russia 75,000 years ago. The results suggest a broad-faced species that would have looked distinct from both humans and Neanderthals.
Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen who wasn't involved in the work, calls the approach "clever." But he and others caution against making specieswide generalizations based on a single individual.
Perhaps 600,000 years ago, the lineage that led to modern humans split from the one that led to Neanderthals and Denisovans. Then about 400,000 years ago, Denisovans and Neanderthals themselves split into separate branches. Denisovans ranged from Siberia to Southeast Asia and may have persisted until as recently as 30,000 years ago, based on their genetic legacy in living Southeast Asians.
Hundreds of Neanderthal skeletons, including intact skulls, have been found over the years. But the only fossils conclusively linked to Denisovans are a pinkie bone from the girl plus three teeth, all from Denisova Cave, and a recently identified lower jaw from China's Baishiya Karst Cave.
Then in 2014, researchers introduced a novel method based on epigenetics—a set of molecular knobs that can turn gene expression up or down—to analyze (▪ ▪ ▪)

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chanakyakripa

According to one theory, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all descended from the ancient human Homo heidelbergensis. Between 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, an ancestral group of H. heidelbergensis left Africa and then split shortly after. One branch ventured northwestward into West Asia and Europe and became the Neanderthals. The other branch moved east, becoming Denisovans. By 130,000 years ago, H. heidelbergensis in Africa had become Homo sapiens—our ancestors—who did not begin their own exodus from Africa until about 60,000 years ago. so genetically, any one from either of these groups can mate succesfully to give viable offsprings and exactly that happened as gene pool was small & population was also scarce at that time. the most successful of the lot being Homo Sapiens sapiens, they have survived till date and do carry some amount of genetic material identical to that of all these groups like Neanderthals, denosovans etc. in fact, the certain inhabitants of Papua new guinea, known as Melanesians have 3-5% of Denosovan DNA due to DNA overlap between ancestors of these people and the Denosovans.

KH_Hirsch

Looks a little bit like my sister. Joke aside I would assume that the above author is quite right, we're all from the same origin but managed to build up our differences much later. Maybe the internet helped, to the differences I mean.