Denny was an inter-species lovechild.
Her mother was a Neanderthal, but her father was Denisovan, a distinct species of primitive human that also roamed the Eurasian continent 50,000 years ago, scientists reported in Nature on Wednesday.
Nicknamed by Oxford University scientists, Denisova 11 — her official name — was at least 13 when she died for reasons unknown.
“There was earlier evidence of interbreeding between different hominin, or early human, groups,” said lead author Vivian Slon, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “But this is the first time that we have found a direct, first-generation offspring.”
Denny’s surprising pedigree was unlocked from a bone fragment unearthed in 2012 by Russian archeologists at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.
Analysis of the bone’s DNA left no doubt: The chromosomes were a 50-50 mix of Neanderthal and Denisovan, two distinct species of early humans that split apart between 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.
“I initially thought that they must have screwed up in the lab,” said senior author and Max Planck Institute professor Svante Paabo, who identified the first Denisovan a decade ago at the same site.
Worldwide, fewer than two dozen early human genomes from before 40,000 years ago — Neanderthal, Denisovan and Homo sapiens — have been sequenced, and the chances of stumbling on a half-and-half hybrid seemed vanishingly small. Or not.
“The very fact that we found this individual of mixed Neanderthal and Denisovan origins suggests that they interbred much more often than we thought,” said Slon.
A 40,000-year-old Homo sapiens with a Neanderthal ancestor a few generations back, recently found in Romania, also bolsters this notion, but the most compelling evidence that inter-species hanky-panky in Late Pleistocene Eurasia might not have been that rare lies in the genes of contemporary humans.
About 2 percent of DNA in non-Africans across the globe today originates with Neanderthals, earlier studies have shown.
Denisovan remnants are also widespread, although less evenly.
“We find traces of Denisovan DNA — less than 1 percent — everywhere in Asia and among native Americans,” Paabo said. “Aboriginal Australians and people in Papua New Guinea have about 5 percent.”
Taken together, these facts support a novel answer to the hotly debated question of why Neanderthals — who had successfully spread across parts of western and central Europe — disappeared about 40,000 years ago.
What if our species — arriving in waves from Africa — overwhelmed Neanderthals, and perhaps Denisovans, with affection rather than aggression?
“Part of the story of these groups is that they may simply have been absorbed by modern populations,” Paabo said.
Recent research showing that Neanderthals were not knuckle-dragging brutes makes this scenario all the more plausible. Far less is known about Denisovans, but they might have suffered a similar fate.
Paabo established their existence with an incomplete finger bone and two molars dated to about 80,000 years ago.
Among their genetic legacy to some modern humans is a variant of the gene EPAS1, which makes it easier for the body to access oxygen by regulating the production of hemoglobin, a 2014 study said.
Nearly 90 percent of Tibetans have this precious variant, compared with only 9 percent of Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not