The Genome of a Human From an Unknown Population Has Been Recovered From Cave Dirt [View all]
A cup of mud that has been buried beneath the floor of a cave for millennia has just yielded up the genome of an ancient human.
Analysis reveals traces of a woman who lived 25,000 years ago, before the last Ice Age; and, although we don't know much about her, she represents a significant scientific achievement: the feasibility of identifying ancient human populations even when there are no bones to recover
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First, the woman. Only a tiny fraction of her genome was recovered, but from that, the researchers were able to infer that she was a member of a previously unknown group of modern humans. That group is now extinct, but it contributed to present day populations in Europe and Asia, as discovered when the ancient genome was compared to current human genomes.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-human-genome-has-been-recovered-from-cave-dirt
I knew they'd found ancient DNA fragments in habitation layers. Sequencing them this far is a massive achievement.
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