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| Catalog no. | DC1227; GenBank Accession = KU131206 |
|---|---|
| Common name | Denny (Denisova 11) |
| Species | 1st generation Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid |
| Age | 90,000 years |
| Place discovered | Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, Russia |
| Date discovered | 2012 |
| Discovered by | Viviane Slon, Svante Pääbo, Samantha Brown, Tom Higham, Michael Buckley, Katerina Douka et al. |
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Denny (Denisova 11) is an ~90,000 year old fossil specimen belonging to a ~13-year-old Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid girl.[1][2] To date, she is the only first-generation hybrid hominin ever discovered.[3] Denny’s remains consist of a single fossilized fragment of a long bone discovered among over 2,000 visually unidentifiable fragments excavated at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, Russia in 2012.[2]
A team of researchers at Oxford University led by Tom Higham used a method of collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, called Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis to identify the fragment as belonging to an archaic human with Neanderthal ancestry.[4]
Genomic sequencing and analysis led by paleo-geneticists Viviane Slon and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology revealed that Denny was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.[1][3] Additionally, her genome suggests that her father also carried a small degree of Neanderthal ancestry from 300 to 600 generations prior to his lifetime.[3]
These surprising genomic data has caused some paleontologists to speculate that interspecies mating between Denisovans and Neanderthals could have occurred with some frequency during several periods of contact over many thousands of years.[3] Additionally, these findings lend support to the hypothesis that similar patterns of admixture, or interbreeding between archaic and modern humans, may have resulted in the partial absorption of Denisovans and Neanderthals into modern human populations.[3]
- ^ a b Warren, Matthew (22 August 2018). "Mum's a Neanderthal, Dad's a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid". Nature. 560 (7719): 417–418. Bibcode:2018Natur.560..417W. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-06004-0. PMID 30135540.
- ^ a b Vogel, Gretchen (22 August 2018). "This ancient bone belonged to a child of two extinct human species". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aav1858. S2CID 188160693. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
- ^ a b c d e Slon, Viviane; Mafessoni, Fabrizio; Vernot, Benjamin; de Filippo, Cesare; Grote, Steffi; Viola, Bence; Hajdinjak, Mateja; Peyrégne, Stéphane; Nagel, Sarah; Brown, Samantha; Douka, Katerina (6 September 2018). "The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father". Nature. 561 (7721): 113–116. Bibcode:2018Natur.561..113S. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0455-x. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 6130845. PMID 30135579.
- ^ Brown, Samantha; Higham, Thomas; Slon, Viviane; Pääbo, Svante; Meyer, Matthias; Douka, Katerina; Brock, Fiona; Comeskey, Daniel; Procopio, Noemi; Shunkov, Michael; Derevianko, Anatoly (29 March 2016). "Identification of a new hominin bone from Denisova Cave, Siberia using collagen fingerprinting and mitochondrial DNA analysis". Scientific Reports. 6 (1): 23559. Bibcode:2016NatSR...623559B. doi:10.1038/srep23559. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 4810434. PMID 27020421.