the denisovamens are, along with Neanderthals, the extinct relatives closest to humans, as researchers from Germany after analyzing the remains of an individual due to the relationship between the two species, according to the published journal nature.
"We knew from previous research that Neanderthals and Denisovans had children at some point, but we never thought that we could have so much luck and find a true offspring of both groups," said one of the authors, researcher Viviane Slon. , from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, based in Leipzig (Germany).
The discovery was discovered thanks to a small piece of bone. "This fragment was part of a longer bone and therefore we can estimate that the individual I was at least 13 years old"said specialist Bence Viola, from the University of Toronto (Canada).
The remains were found in 2012 in the cave of Denisova (Siberia) by Russian researchers.
The bone was transferred to Leipzig to be subjected to a genetic analysis, in which they verified that it was a hominid.
"An interesting aspect of this genome is that we let you learn things about two populations: the Neanderthals by his mother and the Denisovans by his father, "stated study author Fabrizio Mafessoni, from the German research center.
According to the researchers, the mother was genetically closer to the Neanderthals in Western Europe than those living in the Denisova cave.
This shows that the Neanderthals they migrated tens of thousands of years before their disappearance between West and East Eurasia, according to the experts.
Father denisova, on the other hand, had at least one Neanderthal ancestor in his family tree.
"We can detect this genome Multiple previous interactions between Neanderthals and Denisovans"said one of the people responsible for the study, the researcher Benjamin Vernot.
"It is surprising that we have found this child from Neanderthal-denisova," acknowledged Svante Pääbo, lead author and director of the department of Evolutionary genetics at the research institute.
"Perhaps Neanderthals and Denisovans did not have many opportunities to get to know each other, but when they did, They must have covered much more often than we thought", condemned Pääbo.
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