Author Topic: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans  (Read 722 times)

rayallen0

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Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« on: July 27, 2012, 02:36:04 PM »
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The human family tree just got another — mysterious — branch, an African “sister species” to the heavy-browed Neanderthals that once roamed Europe.

While no fossilized bones have been found from these enigmatic people, they did leave a calling card in present-day Africans: snippets of foreign DNA.

There’s only one way that genetic material could have made it into modern human populations.

“Geneticists like euphemisms, but we’re talking about sex,” said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose lab identified the mystery DNA in three groups of modern Africans.

These genetic leftovers do not resemble DNA from any modern-day humans. The foreign DNA also does not resemble Neanderthal DNA, which shows up in the DNA of some modern-day Europeans, Akey said. That means the newly identified DNA came from an unknown group.

“We’re calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa,” Akey said. He added that the interbreeding probably occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, long after some modern humans had walked out of Africa to colonize Asia and Europe, and around the same time Neanderthals were waning in Europe.

The find offers more evidence that for thousands of years, modern-looking humans shared the Earth with evolutionary cousins that later died out. And whenever the groups met, whether in Africa or Europe, they did what came naturally — they bred. In fact, hominid hanky-panky seems to have occurred wherever humans met others who looked kind of like them — a controversial idea until recently.

In 2010, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany announced finding Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of modern Europeans.

Barrel-chested people whose thick double brows, broad noses and flat faces set them apart from modern humans, Neanderthals disappeared about 25,000 or 30,000 years ago.

Another mysterious group of extinct people recently identified from a 30,000-year-old finger bone in Siberia — known as the Denisovans — also left some of their DNA in modern-day Pacific Islanders.

And while modern humans and the newly found “archaic” Africans might be classified as distinct species, they produced viable offspring. Likewise, donkeys and horses, lions and tigers.

One skull found in Nigeria with puzzling “primitive” features may represent a survivor of these mystery people — or a hybrid with anatomically modern humans — said Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the new work.

“You can argue, are these really different species?” Stringer said.

Stringer added that he was not surprised to see genetic evidence for another humanlike group in Africa that interbred with anatomically modern people, who are thought to have emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

Still, without a definitive fossil, it’s impossible to say what these people looked like. But one thing is clear: This enigmatic group left its DNA all across Africa. The researchers found it in the forest-dwelling pygmies of central Africa and in two groups of hunter-gatherers on the other side of the continent — the Hadza and Sandawe people of Tanzania.

Starting a decade ago, a team led by Sarah Tishkoff and Joseph Lachance of the University of Pennsylvania drew blood from five individuals in each of the three groups. Using the latest genetic technology, Tishkoff spent $150,000 to read, or sequence, the DNA of these 15 people. The research was reported Wednesday in the journal Cell.

In addition to finding evidence of the now-extinct humans, the team discovered a huge range of genetic diversity between the three groups. The human genome contains about 3 billion letters, or base pairs, of DNA. Before this study, scientists had found that about 40 million of these letters vary across human populations.

But in the 15 Africans, Tishkoff and Lachance found 3 million more genetic variants — a huge treasure trove of human diversity. Among this stunning variety, Tishkoff says they have pinpointed some of the genes responsible for the short stature of the pygmies, who average less than 5 feet in height. She also found that immune system genes and genes for taste and smell varied wildly between the three groups — confirming Africa as the seat of the widest range of human diversity.

The oldest modern human skull, found in Ethi­o­pia, dates to 195,000 years ago. For more than 150,000 years, then, humans shared the planet with cousin species.

Despite all the amorous advances, however, only one group survived: us.

Akey said: “As we were conquering the world, we also conquered similar human populations that were dying out.”


source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/early-africans-mated-with-mystery-species-of-humans/2012/07/26/gJQAxFzZBX_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
 

Hack Wilson - real

Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2012, 02:38:06 PM »
infinite is jumping for joy
 

I`m Wayne Brady bitch!

Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2012, 04:20:06 PM »
Interesting. It sort of makes the fact that your father mated with a bag of sick to make someone as dumb as you (who believes in such bullshit) not so hard to understand.
 

rayallen0

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2012, 04:52:32 PM »
1000+ posts on a troll account impressive.  :D
 

Hood Crawler

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2012, 05:20:43 PM »
Hmmmm, mystery people??? Sounds fake.

rayallen0

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2012, 05:46:45 PM »
Hmmmm, mystery people??? Sounds fake.
They have found new species all the time, neandrathuls are like 99.7% human. What makes this unbelievable?
 

K-MACC

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2012, 01:50:55 PM »
Interesting. It sort of makes the fact that your father mated with a bag of sick to make someone as dumb as you (who believes in such bullshit) not so hard to understand.
lol
 

rayallen0

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2012, 01:53:22 PM »
Interesting. It sort of makes the fact that your father mated with a bag of sick to make someone as dumb as you (who believes in such bullshit) not so hard to understand.
lol
Get out of here, you dont care about science or new discoveries. Go feed ur kid.
 

K-MACC

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2012, 07:01:46 PM »
Interesting. It sort of makes the fact that your father mated with a bag of sick to make someone as dumb as you (who believes in such bullshit) not so hard to understand.
lol
Get out of here, you dont care about science or new discoveries. Go feed ur kid.
ok gay ray go get your allowance from mommy and daddy and buy a pizza for you and your roomates
 

rayallen0

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #9 on: July 28, 2012, 09:55:29 PM »
Lol ur biggest insult to me is that my parents payed for 2 years of college. While you cant even take care of your own child.
 

Sikotic™

Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #10 on: July 28, 2012, 10:11:25 PM »
Shit, I've fucked a few girls that didn't look 100% human. This makes perfect sense to me.
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THA SAUCE HOUSE
 

bouli77

Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2012, 04:51:47 AM »
very interesting article. props.

would have been crazy to live with a cousin species nowadays.
 

Dikteta Dax

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2012, 01:10:35 PM »
very interesting article. props.

would have been crazy to live with a cousin species nowadays.
 

K-MACC

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #13 on: July 29, 2012, 02:40:12 PM »
Lol ur biggest insult to me is that my parents payed for 2 years of college. While you cant even take care of your own child.
all you say is i cant take care of my child  ::) go to your bedroom that you share with your boys you gay kid
 

rayallen0

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Re: Early Africans mated with mystery species of humans
« Reply #14 on: July 29, 2012, 06:31:53 PM »
Lol ur biggest insult to me is that my parents payed for 2 years of college. While you cant even take care of your own child.
all you say is i cant take care of my child  ::) go to your bedroom that you share with your boys you gay kid
Lol its a 5 bedroom place, i know you r too fucking poor to afford more than 1 room so it is a weird concept for you, lol at the 30 something year old trying to compare his live to a 20 year old.

Nope more than that. You are the only one on here that nobody considers cool. Inifinite, will, nik, elano all have ppl who co sign them, you are the only one universally known as a dumbass.

You are from canada and obsessed with california but make fun of other amrericans.

You have no humor or thought in your insults, and no sting in them. Im proud my parents were able to help me through college, you def cant be proud you are a deadbeat father or else you are a sick fuck. Ive been pro gay marriage and public about it on this forum, so ur frank ocean insults work less. Insults are supposed to sting, not make me laugh.

If you need to make urself feel better about yourself cuz ur life sucks, insult celebs on twitter ur unintetional trolling is pretty good, i mean i thoughtnu were a real troll tell you started calling others trolls.