> the sequence obtained from the remains indicated that the individual was related evolutionarily with Denisovans. AFP / FILE
TECHNOLOGY
- Both findings make the Sima of the Bones in the only place where they found DNA
the sample was found in a femur and incisor tooth showing the relationship
The sample of nuclear DNA was found in a femur and an incisor tooth, as a result of tests carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, after it localizase mitochondrial DNA in one of the fossils.
In 2014, the journal Nature published the almost complete mitochondrial genome of a femur from the Pit of Bones, an “incredible success” that had never succeeded before human fossils so old, reported Museum of Human Evolution in a statement.
The sequence obtained indicated that the individual was related evolutionarily with Denisovans, an extinct population that lived in Siberia, not Neanderthals.
It was a “surprising” result that contrasted with the paleontological study, published that same year in Science, showing an evolutionary relationship between the Pit of Bones and Neanderthals, who would be his descendants.
Among the keys to understanding this divergence that mitochondrial DNA provides partial information was, because it is transmitted only through the mother, unlike nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both lines.
For this reason, since 2014 it has been seeking nuclear DNA in the Pit of Bones, an “almost impossible” mission given the DNA degradation because of their age.
The study published today unveils a second femur finding confirms the results of mitochondrial DNA from the first, but also provides nuclear DNA that relates to the Neanderthals.
It has also recovered a tooth that provides nuclear DNA of the same type as the femur, so both discoveries make the Sima of the Bones in the only site outside the arctic soil in which has recovered DNA from the Middle Pleistocene.
Matthias Meyer, first author and leader of the research, says that this result indicates that “separation between Neanderthals and Denisovans is older than 430,000 years with the Sima fossils”.
Similarly, the finding also suggests that the separation of the line leading to Homo Sapiens of the other lines, the “archaic”, humans could have occurred between 550 thousand years ago and 800 thousand years. “
in addition, with this time interval, fossils of Gran Dolina, also in Atapuerca, Homo antecessor and dated between 800,000 and a million years, are confirmed as the best candidates for locate the last common ancestor between them.
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