<ul><li><keyword id="15153866" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="paabo" source="Orion">Paabo</keyword> has been awarded the prestigious prize for having sequenced the genomes of our extinct relatives.</li><li>Paabo is widely regarded as having pioneered the field of ancient DNA</li><li>Nobel prize winner studied ancient DNA in material ranging from mummified humans to extinct ground sloths.</li></ul>The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for 2022 has been awarded to Svante Paabo from the <keyword id="2306463" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="max-planck-institute-for-evolutionary-anthropology" source="Orion">Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology</keyword> in Leipzig, Germany, for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.<br /><br />In other words, Paabo has been awarded the prestigious prize for having sequenced the genomes of our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and for the fact that these discoveries have resulted in novel insights into human evolution.<br /><br />Paabo is widely regarded as having pioneered the field of ancient DNA, a research area dedicated to the recovery and analysis of DNA from historic and prehistoric remains.<br /><br />Although Paabo did his PhD in medical science at <keyword id="196985" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="uppsala-university" source="Orion">Uppsala University</keyword> in Sweden in the early 1980s, he also studied <keyword id="2255540" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="egyptology" source="Orion">Egyptology</keyword> when he was at <keyword id="4100233" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="uppsala" source="Orion">Uppsala</keyword>. It was a logical next step that he took tools from molecular biology, garnered from his expertise in medical science, to better understand human prehistory.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Extracting DNA from ancient bones" comment="subhead" text="Extracting DNA from ancient bones"><span data-til="noop">Extracting DNA from ancient bones</span></cmsannotation><br />Beginning in the 1980s, Paabo studied ancient DNA in material ranging from mummified humans to extinct ground sloths. This work was technically challenging because ancient DNA is significantly degraded and can be contaminated.<br /><br />In the decade that followed, he developed a series of methods and guidelines to recover and interpret authentic DNA and to minimise the risk of contamination from modern sources, especially from contemporary humans.<br /><br />In the early 1990s, there was significant excitement in the field about the possibility of recovering DNA from dinosaurs. However, based on his knowledge on how DNA degrades over time, Paabo remained sceptical that DNA could survive such a long time. He was later proven right.<br /><br />For many of his colleagues, it was clear that P bo's goal was always to recover Neanderthal DNA. But he took his time and carefully developed the methods for recovering and authenticating ancient DNA until these methods were mature enough to accomplish this objective.<br /><br />Finally, in 1997, Paabo and his colleagues published the first Neanderthal DNA sequences. In 2010 this was followed by the entire Neanderthal genome (that is, all the genetic information stored in the DNA of one Neanderthal).<br /><br />Only a few years later, the group also published the genome from a previously unknown type of human, the Denisovans, distantly related to Neanderthals. This sequencing was based on a 40,000-year-old fragment of bone discovered in the Denisova cave in Siberia.<br /><br />By virtue of being able to compare these with human genomes, one of the most important findings of Paabo's work has been that many modern humans carry a small proportion of DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Modern humans picked up these snippets of DNA through hybridisation, when modern and archaic humans mixed, as modern humans expanded across Eurasia during the last ice age.<br /><br />For example, particular Neanderthal genes affect how our immune system reacts to infections, including COVID-19. The Denisovan version of a gene called EPAS1, meanwhile, helps people survive at high altitudes. It's common among modern-day Tibetans.<br /><br />At the same time, in comparing the genomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans with those of modern humans, Paabo and his colleagues have been able to highlight genetic mutations that are not shared. A large proportion of these are connected to how the brain develops.<br /><br />By revealing genetic differences that distinguish living humans from our extinct ancestors, Paabo's influential discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/sensex-opens-1100-points-higher-mirroring-gains-in-global-markets/articleshow/94634505.cms">Sensex opens 1,100 points higher mirroring gains in global markets</a><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech-buying-guides/best-laser-printers-for-home-and-office-use/articleshow/77977886.cms"><strong>Best laser printers for homes and offices in India</strong></a><br />

Nobel prize winner Svante Paabo's DNA discoveries offer clues as to what makes us human

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Denisova cave in <keyword id="6367287" type="LOCATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="siberia">Siberia</keyword> was home to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/a-handful-of-recent-discoveries-have-shattered-anthropologists-picture-of-where-humans-came-from-and-when/articleshow/73110125.cms">three types of human ancestors</a> starting 300,000 years ago.</li><li>Our <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/dragon-man-china-fossil-related-humans-neanderthals-2021-6">Neanderthal</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/denisovan-dna-tibet-human-ancestors-high-altitudes-2020-12">Denisovan relatives</a> may have overlapped with modern humans there, a study says.</li><li>The cave might have sat along a migration route between Europe and Asia.</li></ul><p>Denisova Cave, high in the mountains of Siberia, was a happening place for our ancestors 300,000 years ago. Anthropologists have known that for a while: Scientists have excavated bones and teeth there from our Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins - and one of their <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06004-0">hybrid children</a> - over the last two decades. They've also found stone tools and jewelry.</p><p>But according to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03675-0">a recent study</a> in the journal Nature, modern humans appear to have joined the party, too.</p><p>An analysis of ancient DNA culled from sediment on the cave floor suggests that these Homo sapiens occupied the cave starting around 45,000 years ago. So they may have overlapped with <keyword id="528865" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword> and <keyword id="507203" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Denisovans">Denisovans</keyword>.</p><p>"We now have the first direct evidence for the presence of ancient modern humans at the site," Elena Zavala, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and a co-author of the study, told Insider.</p><div type="image" title="Neanderthal Evolution" height="1968" width="2625" msid="84017900" hostid="261"></div><p>The findings offer further insight into how our human ancestors interacted and interbred - exchanging genes and tool-making technology that altered the course of our species' evolution.</p><p>"I cannot think of another site where three human species lived through time," Katerina Douka, an archaeologist who was not involved in the study, <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/ancient-siberian-cave-hosted-neanderthals-denisovans-and-modern-humans-possibly-same">told Science</a>.</p><h2>Ancient DNA tells a 300,000-year story</h2><p>Zavala's team collected more than 700 soil samples between 300,000 and 20,000 years old from across the cave's three chambers.</p><p>One-quarter of those samples contained hominin DNA from microscopic bits of human skin, hair, and poop that got mixed into the sediment. The researchers also found DNA from ancient dogs, bears, hyenas, and horses.</p><div type="image" title="denisovan mtDNA lab work" height="2649" width="3531" msid="84017904" hostid="261"></div><p>From their extensive DNA analysis, they were able to piece together a timeline of the cave's occupants. Starting about 250,000 years ago, during a period of global warming, Denisovans started using the cave. Then roughly 60,000 years later, as the climate shifted and temperatures started to drop, Neanderthals arrived on scene.</p><p>The two hominins shared the cave for another 60,000 years before traces of the Denisovans disappeared from the fossil record.</p><p>For 30,000 years, Neanderthals were the cave's sole occupants. After that, the new study reveals, a second population of Denisovans emerged. That happened about 100,000 years ago, at the start of the last global ice age. DNA evidence suggests both these Denisovans and their Neanderthal cave-mates survived for up to 78,000 years more.</p><p>That's an important part of the timeline, according to the study, because it suggests those two hominin groups were still thriving in Denisova Cave when the first Homo sapiens showed up 45,000 years ago.</p><div type="image" title="denisova cave" height="3000" width="4000" msid="84017911" hostid="261"></div><p>The team found DNA from all three species in a layer of soil that's between 45,000 and 22,000 years old - which suggests they all overlapped.</p><h2>A meeting point for hominins</h2><div type="image" title="denisovan" height="1080" width="1440" msid="84017912" hostid="261"></div><p>The fact that three hominin species all chose the same cave got Zavala thinking: What made this spot so special?</p><p>"It's interesting that Denisovans and Neanderthals kept returning to the cave because it is located at the edge of what is thought to be each of their geographical ranges," she said. (Neanderthals were predominantly from Europe, and Denisovans from Asia.)</p><p>Most likely, according to Zavala, it sat along a migration route between Europe and Asia.</p><p>"This cave was repeatedly meeting point between these two regions," she said. </p><p>But to verify this idea, anthropologists would need to find more sites along this potential migratory path.</p><div type="image" title="denisova cave" height="2666" width="4000" msid="84017915" hostid="261"></div><p>Zavala thinks excavators will continue to find more traces of hominin and animal occupants in Denisova Cave.</p><p>Previously, anthropologists had to rely on <keyword id="6377866" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="fossils">fossils</keyword> to assess which ancient species were present in an area. But pulling DNA straight from the soil has increased the amount of evidence scientists have to work with, thereby making findings like Zavala's possible.</p><p>"We are not limited by the rare discovery of skeletal materials," she said.</p>

3 species of human ancestors may have mixed and mingled in one Siberian cave 45,000 years ago - altering our evolution

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Some research has suggested that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-neanderthal-teeth-plaque-diet-2017-3">eating meat</a> helped early humans' brains evolve to be larger.</li><li>So dieters seeking to emulate their ancestors usually rely on meat-heavy, low-carb diets <a href="https://www.insider.com/what-is-keto-diet">like keto</a>.</li><li>But a new study suggests <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/discoveries-changed-understanding-human-history-evolution-2020-12">Neanderthals and their ancestors</a> ate plenty of starchy <keyword id="25947" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="carbohydrates">carbohydrates</keyword>. </li></ul><p>Images of our human ancestors in popular culture often depict muscly hunters chasing and feasting on big game. So it makes sense that contemporary imitators follow diets like Paleo and keto that are meat-heavy and low-carb.</p><p>But new evidence suggests that <keyword id="528865" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword> and their ancestors consumed hefty portions of starchy carbohydrates as they expanded across eastern Africa and into Europe.</p><p>Traces of ancient bacteria on Neanderthal teeth suggest that starting at least 600,000 years ago, our ancestors ate carb-rich plant foods to meet the energy demands of increasingly bigger brains. That's according to <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/20/e2021655118">a study</a> published Monday from a team including anthropologists at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. </p><p>"It's clear early humans hunted, but I think it's nearly impossible they were exclusively hunting. And I think it's really improbable that they were even predominantly hunting," Christina Warinner, a Harvard anthropologist and co-author of the new study, told Insider. "I think they had a mixed dietary strategy."</p><p>So modern-day dieters trying to emulate our ancestors' habits by prioritizing meat are missing the mark: "'The <keyword id="666205" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Paleo-diet">Paleo diet</keyword>' is really quite unrelated to the Paleolithic," Warinner said. "It's a misnomer."</p><h2>Our ancestors' teeth can reveal what they ate</h2><p>The earliest members of the genus that includes modern humans, Homo, first appeared during the Paleolithic period, which began 2.5 million years ago. Eventually, they displaced the human ancestors before them, the Australopiths.</p><p>Australopiths had tiny brains similar in size to those of chimpanzees. By the time Neanderthals appeared at the end of the Paleolithic period, about 12,000 years ago, our ancestors' brain size had tripled. </p><div type="image" title="MRD_CMNH0353.image jpeg" height="3620" width="3600" msid="82632870" hostid="261"></div><p>Initially, anthropologists thought that <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-led-to-smaller-stomachs-bigger-brains/#:~:text=It's%20likely%20that%20meat%20eating,caloric%20intake%20associated%20with%20chimpanzees.ees.">meat-eating was</a> what prompted early human brains to grow rapidly, since some <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190219111704.htm#:~:text=was%20definitely%20meat-,Isotope%20analyses%20performed%20on%20single%20amino%20acids%20in%20Neanderthals'%20collagen,light%20on%20their%20debated%20diet&amp;text=Summary%3A&amp;text=Neanderthals%20are%20apparently%20occupying%20a,found%20at%20the%20same%20sitessame%20sites">research</a> suggests Neanderthals' primary food source was meat. But Warinner was skeptical: Growing brains require glucose, a simple sugar gleaned from carbohydrates. There isn't much glucose in meat.</p><p>What's more, many studies on Neanderthals' meat consumption relied on the ratio of carbon and nitrogen in their teeth and bones, but factors other than diet - including periodic fasting - can influence that measurement.</p><p>So Warinner's team looked at the DNA of bacteria fossilized onto ancient teeth. They compared tooth bacteria from 124 living and extinct primates, including a Neanderthal that lived 100,000 years ago in Europe. The results showed that Neanderthals had almost the exact same bacteria in their mouths as modern humans do. </p><p>One bacteria subspecies in particular caught the researchers' eyes because it can feed itself using an enzyme in our saliva called amylase. Amylase is what helps our bodies extract sugar from starchy tubers and roots. </p><p>That bacteria was only present on human and neanderthal teeth - not teeth from chimps, gorillas, or howler monkeys.</p><p>"It gives us some hints that starch was present in the early human diet," Warinner said.</p><div type="image" title="Neanderthal family" height="2232" width="3968" msid="82632875" hostid="261"></div><p>The finding also suggests that early humans commonly cooked food over a fire, she added, since the amylase enzyme is better at breaking down starches when they're cooked.</p><h2>The Paleo and keto diets may not resemble those of our ancestors</h2><p>The new findings fly in the face of the popular Paleo diet, which relies heavily on meat, fish, and greens while eschewing grains and starches.</p><p>The ketogenic diet is even more restrictive, severely limiting carbohydrates in favor of fat and protein, often from meat.</p><p>Low-carb diets like these prompt the body to produce its preferred fuel, glucose, in the liver and kidneys, using components of fat and protein in a process called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541119/">gluconeogenesis</a>. Another low-carb metabolic strategy is ketosis, a state where the body adapts to fuel the brain and other organs by burning fat instead of glucose.</p><div type="image" title="Neanderthal Evolution" height="1968" width="2625" msid="82632877" hostid="261"></div><p>But Warinner doesn't think early humans relied on gluconeogenesis or ketosis.</p><p>"Making your own sugar, producing your own glucose, actually requires a high amount of dietary fat," she said.</p><p>Most of the terrestrial animals that the ancestors of Neanderthals hunted in Africa did not have large fat stores, Warinner added.</p><p>"Populations that have survived for a very long period of time on low carbohydrate diets, they tend to be marine mammal hunters, because marine mammals have large fat stores," she said.</p><p>Ultimately, comparing today's diets with ancestral ones is a fallacious exercise, since modern-day humans live in a world nothing like that of Neanderthals.</p><p>"Someone who sits at a computer for eight hours a day, you know, they live a different life than someone who is foraging," Warinner said. </p><p>The starchy tubers our ancestors ate were also different than contemporary carbs - they were nutrient-dense, high in fiber, and rich in vitamins. </p><p>"It's not really fair to compare wild root vegetables with things like pizza and pasta," Warinner added. "They're really different in their nutritional makeup and composition."</p><div type="image" title="keto diet" height="2680" width="4020" msid="82632880" hostid="261"></div><p>There's little evidence that the Paleo or keto diets offer strong advantages over other nutrient-rich, whole-food eating styles. </p><p>"I don't think we need to throw everything back and dial the clock back 10,000 years to be healthy," Warinner said.</p>

If you want to eat like your paleo ancestors, stop cutting out all carbs, a new study suggests

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Modern humans have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, and those genes still impact our health today.</li><li>Scientists think they've figured out when the two groups started interbreeding and swapping DNA.</li></ul><p>We might consider Neanderthals to be ancient and unknowable relatives, but humans were once on very intimate terms with them.</p><p>Our ancestors, for example, had babies with the shorter, stockier species and swapped DNA for thousands of years.</p><p>Now researchers think they've figured out when much of this <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/some-more-neanderthal-dna-others-scientists-why-2023-10">interspecies intermingling</a> took place, which could provide clues about why humans outlasted their ancient cousins.</p><p>Studying genomic data from both ancient and modern humans, scientists learned that Neanderthals and humans were having sex around 47,000 years ago then stopped less than 7,000 years later — relatively brief in terms of evolution.</p><p>"This study gives us the most accurate picture showing how some Neanderthals joined into the modern human gene pool, and then what happened to their genes afterward," John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not involved in the research, told Business Insider.</p><p>All humans have at least a little Neanderthal DNA, a 2020 <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30059-3">study</a> found. These <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals-affects-our-health-today-2023-6">genes may impact</a> everything from metabolism to our risk for diabetes.</p><p>Finding out when humans acquired them can help scientists understand how these genes evolved and why they might have been beneficial to our ancestors and stuck around in our DNA for millennia.</p><h2 id="64b33196-5a80-4c02-9e77-14f882e71692">When did humans and Neanderthals start interbreeding?</h2><div type="image" title="Two Neanderthal skeletons on display at The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History" height="1585" width="2003" msid="110804461" hostid="261" sizebytes="198430"></div><p>The basic story of human-Neanderthal relationships goes like this: We <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/may/neanderthals-and-modern-humans-diverged-least-800000-years-ago">shared</a> a common ancestor over 500,000 years ago then went our separate ways.</p><p>Then,<strong> </strong>around 75,000 years ago, Neanderthals were living in Asia and Europe when some humans started moving out of Africa. The two groups began having children together shortly after that,<strong> </strong>sometime between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago.</p><p>But<strong> </strong>by 40,000 years ago, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthals-extinct-humans-naked-neanderthal-book-2024-2">Neanderthals were extinct</a>.</p><p>For this latest study, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of California, Berkeley<strong> </strong>looked at DNA from 59 humans who lived between 45,000 and 2,200 years ago.</p><p>To figure out when our<strong> </strong>ancient human ancestors hooked up with Neanderthals, the researchers compared stretches of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes. Individuals from about 40,000 years ago had long stretches of gene-containing chromosomes that matched the other species.</p><p>The researchers saw that after just a few thousand years, these segments were shorter. This means those humans were more distantly related to Neanderthals, Hawks said.</p><p>Using computer software, the scientists created models to estimate how many generations had passed since a Neanderthal entered their family tree. From that,<strong> </strong>they set the starting date of human-Neanderthal hookups at around 47,124 years ago and estimated that interbreeding lasted for about 6,832 years.</p><p>"The conclusion is fairly strong," Hawks said, because the estimates fit both the earlier and later human genomes.<br /></p><h2 id="9369ca5b-0d18-47d4-a530-2bf60b9f8c51">The Neanderthals that live on inside us</h2><div type="image" title="Neanderthal Evolution" height="1969" width="3500" msid="110804459" hostid="261" sizebytes="390290"></div><p>In addition to ancient human<strong> </strong>DNA, the researchers also studied the genomes of 275 modern people from various backgrounds to learn more about how humans and Neanderthal genes have<strong> </strong>evolved<strong> </strong>over the millennia.</p><p>"It is possible to track the fate of single parts of chromosomes that were once in a Neanderthal individual, came into that individual's modern descendants, and were passed on until the present day," Hawks said.</p><p>For example, the researchers found both current and ancient humans have Neanderthal genes that affect metabolism, immunity, and skin pigmentation.</p><p>They speculate that these characteristics may have benefited ancient humans who inherited them and then kept passing them on. One <a target="_blank" href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals">hypothesis</a> is that paler skin would have helped increase Vitamin D levels in gloomier climates.</p><p>Other studies have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthals-humans-belong-to-same-species-could-rewrite-history-evolution-2023-12">linked Neanderthal genes</a> to autoimmune diseases and diabetes. On the other hand, some DNA from the species seems to protect people from West Nile, hepatitis C, and SARS.</p><p>The study's results don't necessarily apply to everyone. For instance,<strong> </strong>no present-day people of African ancestry were included because only about 0.5 % of their DNA comes from Neanderthals.</p><p>However, almost everyone else in the world is about 2% Neanderthal, so learning more about the species' genes could shed light on many peoples' <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthal-dna-and-modern-humans-2014-1">susceptibility to certain diseases</a>.</p><p>The researchers published their work in a pre-print <a target="_blank" href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.13.593955v1.full">study</a>, which hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.</p>

Humans and Neanderthals only had sex for a brief period, but it still fundamentally changed our DNA

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Some people may have genes inherited from <keyword id="528865" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword> that reduce their risk of severe <keyword id="8763838" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid-19">COVID-19</keyword> by 22%, a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2026309118">study</a> found.</li><li>But the same researchers previously found that Neanderthal DNA can also put people at higher risk of respiratory failure due to COVID-19. </li><li>The inherited genes are more common in Europe and Asia.</li></ul><p>As an emergency room doctor, Hugo Zeberg has seen first-hand how widely COVID-19 infections can vary in severity. So he started digging for answers in a place that was familiar to him: the genome of Neanderthals.</p><p>Zeberg works at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and for the last couple of years, has been studying the degree to which Neanderthals - an extinct human species that died out about 40,000 years ago - passed along genes to modern humans through interbreeding.</p><p>Scientists think Neanderthal DNA makes up 1% to 2% of the genomes of many people of European and Asian descent. That small fraction of people's genetic codes may hold important clues about our immune responses to pathogens.</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2026309118">study</a> published this week, Zeberg and his colleague Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology suggest that some people may have inherited a genetic advantage that reduces their risk of getting severe COVID-19 by 22%.</p><p>The advantage comes from a single haplotype - or long block of DNA - on chromosome 12. The same haplotype has been shown to protect people against West Nile, hepatitis C, and SARS (another <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> that shares many genetic similarities with the new one, SARS-CoV-2). </p><p>"The protective effect of this haplotype is probably not unique to SARS-CoV-2, but a more general part of our immune system," Zeberg told Insider. </p><h2>Some Neanderthal genes are helpful, others are harmful</h2><div type="image" title="FILE PHOTO: Hyperrealistic face of a Neanderthal male is displayed in a cave in the Neanderthal Museum in the northern Croatian town of Krapina February 25, 2010. REUTERS/Nikola Solic/File Photo" height="1993" width="2658" msid="81096366" hostid="261"></div><p>Zeberg and Pääbo found that the Neanderthal-inherited haplotype may have become more common among humans in the last 1,000 years. One possible explanation for this, Zeberg said, is the genes' role in protecting people against other diseases caused by RNA viruses.</p><p>For their new study, the team relied on the genomes of three Neanderthals - two whose remains were found in southern Siberia and one from Croatia. The DNA dates back 50,000 to 120,000 years. They compared those Neanderthal genomes to the DNA of thousands of people with severe COVID-19.</p><p>The haplotype associated with less severe COVID-19 was found in all three Neanderthal genomes. It codes for proteins that activate enzymes that help degrade RNA viruses.</p><p>However, a prior <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2818-3">study</a> from Zeberg and Pääbo, published in September, showed that not all Neanderthal DNA confers an advantage. In that research, they found that some modern humans have inherited a haplotype on chromosome 3 that puts them at higher risk of respiratory failure due to COVID-19. That particular gene cluster was found in the Neanderthal from Croatia.</p><p>"If you have that variant, you have twice the risk of getting severely ill with COVID-19 - perhaps even more," Zeberg said. </p><p>Zeberg's research suggests that around 25% to 30% of people in Europe and Asia carry the protective haplotype, while up to 65% of people in South Asia and 16% of people in Europe carry the dangerous one. Unfortunately, he said, the protective haplotype doesn't offset the risk of the dangerous one for those who have both.</p><h2>Lingering mysteries about how genes influence COVID-19</h2><div type="image" title="france covid-19 europe second wave" height="1000" width="1500" msid="81096368" hostid="261"></div><p>For the most part, people in Africa don't seem to have inherited any genes from Neanderthals.</p><p>"Neanderthals went to Europe and to Asia and lived there before modern humans," Zeberg said. "Then modern humans came 100,000 years ago and they probably mixed 60,000 years ago. So Africa has never met Neanderthals."</p><p>He added, though, that it's possible that Africans inherited other genetic variants from different ancestors that confer their own protection against COVID-19 .</p><p>"There are variants in Africa that we and others are looking into," Zeberg said.</p><div type="image" title="covid scientist lab coronavirus testing samples" height="2661" width="3992" msid="81096371" hostid="261"></div><p>Scientists still don't know how much of our protection against disease was inherited from ancient ancestors versus acquired more recently. Figuring that out is made more difficult by the fact that part of the Neanderthal genome is still missing.</p><p>But studying ancient genes could still help reveal more about how the body responds to the coronavirus. A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03065-y">December study</a>, for instance, identified eight locations on human chromosomes where particular gene variants were more common among critically ill COVID-19 patients.</p><p>"If we can get a deeper understanding of how our evolutionary history has shaped our immune system, that can be valuable," Zeberg said. </p><p>It's possible, for example, that human ancestors relied on specific genes to protect them from viruses that have since died out. That may explain why certain people's immune systems overreact to the new coronavirus, triggering inflammation that can prove fatal. </p><p>Zeberg said scientists have just started to scratch the surface of these findings.</p>

A genetic advantage inherited from Neanderthals could give some people a 22% lower risk of severe COVID-19

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d668d542e22af0510329892-2400/mrdcmnh0353image-jpeg.jpeg" border="0" alt="MRD_CMNH0353.image jpeg" data-mce-source="Matt Crow, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Facial reconstruction by John Gurche." data-mce-caption="A facial reconstruction of the 3.8-million-year-old Australopithecus anamensis specimen found in Ethiopia in 2016." /></div></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Anthropologists have found very few fossils of the Australopithecus species - a hominin ancestor that lived in Africa between roughly 4 and 2 million years ago.</li><li>Now, researchers have discovered that an Australopithecus anamensis skull found in 2016 is 3.8 million years old, making it the oldest Australopithecus skull ever found. </li><li>The skull, named "MRD," was discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia.</li><li>Its age indicates that Australopithecus anamensis co-existed with Australopithecus afararensis, a species that anthropologists thought lived later on.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Everything we know about the group of human ancestors called Australopiths comes from just a few dozen fossils.</p><p>But a skull discovered in Ethiopia is now changing anthropologists' understanding of the group.</p><p>The skull, nicknamed "MRD,"  was originally unearthed in 2016 in the Afar region in Ethiopia. By carbon-dating minerals in the rocks near where MRD was found, scientists determined the fossil to be roughly 3.8 million years old. That makes it the oldest Australopithecus skull ever found, edging out the previous record-holder by about 200,000 years.</p><p>The scientists' findings about the MRD, published today <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1513-8">in the journal Nature</a>, also show that it belonged to a member of the oldest species of Australopith, called Australopithecus anamensis. </p><p>That means MRD (the nickname comes from its collection number, MRD-VP-1/1) co-existed with another species of human ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, for at least 100,000 years. The nearly complete skeleton "Lucy," was a member of that latter group, which roamed Africa between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago.</p><p>The overlapping timelines of these two species alters scientists' timeline of human evolution, since they previously thought the species burst onto the evolutionary scene one after the other.</p><h2>A face for Australopithecus anamensis</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d6691032e22af0b721190aa-2400/clippedside.jpg" border="0" alt="ClippedSide MRD" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Dale Omori, Courtesy of the Cleveland Natural History Museum" data-mce-caption="A side view of the Australopithecus anamensis skull known as &amp;quotMRD,&quot; which was discovered in Ethiopia in 2016." /></div></div></div></p><p>The term hominins refers to any ancestor in the human lineage (including modern-day Homo sapiens) who are more closely related to each other than they are to chimpanzees. That includes everything from stone tool-wielding Homo erectus to our Neanderthal cousins.</p><p>Australopiths, which were bipedally adept and occasionally climbed trees, were precursors to human ancestors like Neanderthals. They form an evolutionary link between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees and the ancestors of modern humans.</p><p><em><strong>Read More:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropologists-welcome-new-species-homo-luzonensis-2019-4">Scientists may have discovered a new human species. It lived on a tiny island in the Philippines at the same time as Homo sapiens.</a></em></p><p>Scientists previously thought Australopithecus anamensis lived before other early hominin species. But the 3.8-million-year-old skull shows that there wasn't a linear transition from one species to the next, in which MRD-like individuals disappeared and "Lucy"-like individuals took their place.</p><p>"This is a game changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene," Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the lead author of the study, said in a press conference.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d668ec72e22af0f5a0067b4-2142/mrd6image-jpeg.jpeg" border="0" alt="MRD6.image jpeg" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Dale Omori and Liz Russell, Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Natural History" data-mce-caption="Human hands holding a 3.8-million-year-old Australopithecus anamensis skull composite, rendered by Jennifer Taylor." /></div></div></div></p><p>The team's discovery also revealed for the first time what Australopithecus anamensis' face looked like. </p><p>"This is the first specimen to ever give us a glimpse about this species - previous findings were limited to isolated jaw fragments, teeth, and one small fragment of an ear bone," Haile-Selassie said.</p><p>Those previous Australopithecus anamensis specimens, found in Kenya and Ethiopia, were between 4.2 million and 3.9 million years old. This new skull is slightly younger, but it's still the oldest Australopithecus skull ever found -it's almost 200,000 years older than the skull found with the <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/06/watch-introducing-little-foot">nearly complete "Little Foot" skeleton,</a> which is 3.67 million years old.</p><p>MRD shows that Australopithecus anamensis had a protruding face with a prominent forehead and cheek bones, much like other Australopiths in the fossil record.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d668f752e22af0b0c364154-2400/cranium whole2.jpg" border="0" alt="Cranium whole_2" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History" data-mce-caption="The 3.8-million-year-old Australopithecus anamensis skull known as &amp;quotMRD&quot; was found in Ethiopia in 2016." /></div></div></div></p><p>"Australopiths have big, massive faces," study co-author Stephanie Melillo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said in a press conference. Members of the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, have flatter, more slender faces by comparison.</p><p>The skull also revealed that the species had a small brain, which aligns with previous assumptions about its placement on the evolutionary tree between "Lucy"-like australopiths and earlier hominins that were not bipedal.</p><h2>MRD lived 3.8 million years ago in Ethiopia</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d6690a72e22af0a7a5cbf84-2400/yhs with craimage-jpeg.jpeg" border="0" alt="YHS with CRA.image jpeg" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Natural History" data-mce-caption="Anthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie holds the Australopithecus anamensis skull known as " /></div></div></div></p><p>Haile-Selassie knew his team had found something special when a worker named Ali Bereino stumbled upon a jaw bone in the sandstone near the Woranso-Mille District of Ethiopia on February 10, 2016.</p><p>"I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a dream come true," he said in a press release.</p><p>They discovered an almost complete skull split into two major pieces - the upper jaw bone was separated from rest of head, Haile-Selassie said. The team then analyzed the fossil specimen for the next few years, digitally reconstructing the skull's missing pieces and comparing the renderings to other Australopith fossils. That work led them to determine that MRD belonged to the species Australopithecus anamensis.</p><p>The researchers also concluded that MRD was likely a male, and lived in a dry, shrubland habitat. </p><p>"This cranium looks set to become another celebrated icon of human evolution," Fred Spoor, a researcher at London's Natural History Museum who was not involved in the studies, wrote in an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02520-9">accompanying Nature article</a>.</p><p>"Its discovery will substantially affect our thinking … on the evolutionary family tree of early hominins," he added.</p>

Anthropologists have found the oldest skull of one our of earliest human ancestors. The 3.8-million-year-old fossil changes our understanding of human history.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a68a8fd00d0ef5a008b488f-1000/pretty brain.gif" alt="pretty brain" data-mce-source="Simon Neubauer, MPI EVA Leipzig" /><p class="source"><span>Simon Neubauer, MPI EVA Leipzig</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years.</strong></li><li><strong>But our modern-shaped human brains may have only come into existence about 40,000 years ago, researchers say.</strong></li><li><strong>The rounder, bigger brain shape that researchers have tracked lines up with when people started heading out of the cave, developing tools, language, and self-awareness.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><br />Homo sapiens, in our most "modern" form, have been roaming the earth for about 200,000 years now. </p><p>But there's something rather special about the way our brains look today: human skulls are rounder, faces are smaller, and more retracted into the skull. It's different from the way our ancestors looked, more than a hundred thousand years ago.</p><p>And now, for the first time, scientists say they've pinpointed precisely when they believe we grew into our modern skulls.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a68c37100d0ef26008b4607-1500/heads.jpg" alt="heads" data-mce-source="Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig" data-mce-caption="The blue brain shows the globular shape of present-day human heads. In contrast, the skull shape of a Neandertal (pictured here) as well as the earliest Homo sapiens fossils, is elongated." /><p class="source"><span>Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig</span></p><p class="caption">The blue brain shows the globular shape of present-day human heads. In contrast, the red skull shape of a Neandertal, like the earliest Homo sapien fossils, is elongated.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Research published Wednesday in the journal <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao5961">Science Advances</a> by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany says there's something distinct about the way our brains and skulls look now, and it likely developed around 40,000 years ago. </p><p>Compared to our ancestors, the modern head shape features a bigger, rounder cerebellum (that's the area in the back of the brain, responsible for things like motor control and balance, as well as some memory and language). We also have more a bulging, rounded parietal lobe (which helps us orient, plan and pay attention), and smaller, more retracted faces than our predecessors.</p><p>The side walls of the brain became more parallel, the frontal area became taller, and the occipital area, in the back of the head, shifted to a rounder, less "overhanging" shape.</p><p>What's remarkable about the find is that our brain shape changes track almost perfectly with the development of modern behaviors, like carving tools, planning, developing self-awareness, languages and even the first cave drawings. In other words, that so-called "human revolution" of around 40,000 years ago, sometimes referred to as the "great leap forward" happened right around the time we were getting comfy in our newer skulls. </p><div></div><p>As the researchers point out, this didn't all happen overnight, but instead was the result of tens of thousands of years of slight changes. They can't say for sure yet when our brains made the switch, but they're pretty sure it was "at some point after about 100,000 years ago and probably before 35,000 years ago."</p><p>Using 3-D scanning techniques to examine curves, shapes and features of 20 different homo sapien fossils, ranging from 300,000 years to 10,000 years old, the researchers have developed a groundbreaking theory: our modern ways would probably not have been possible without our rounder, more elegant brains.</p><div><p><span>"It is important to note that it is probably not the globular brain shape itself that is advantageous for brain function," </span><span>Simon Neubauer, the anthropologist who led the research, told Business Insider in an email. Instead, he says the rounder features that develop in humans' first few months of life are simply "related to our [modern] behavior," but not causing it. </span></p></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-brain-meditate-2017-10">An evolutionary psychologist explains what happens inside our brain when we meditate and how that changes over time</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/m7S0Wbnf-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

The modern human brain may only be 40,000 years old, scientists say

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5640b6f9bd86ef20008c85cd-1200-1577/ed-boyden.jpg" alt="ed boyden.JPG" data-mce-source="Steve Jennings" /><p class="source"><span>Steve Jennings</span></p><p class="caption">Ed Boyden with his prize.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The Breakthrough Prizes might be considered the scientific equivalent of the oscars, if the oscars were held in Silicon Valley.</p><p>Two of the scientists honored at this year's awards were Ed Boyden of MIT and Karl Deisseroth of Stanford, who pioneered a technique for turning brain cells on or off using pulses of light.</p><p>A total of $22 million <a href="https://breakthroughprize.org/News/29">was awarded</a> during a gala on Sunday night hosted by TV producer Seth MacFarlane, with a performance by musician Pharrell Williams. Prize presenters included actors Russell Crowe, Hilary Swank, and Lily Collins, as well as Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr of the HBO show "Silicon Valley."</p><p>The prizes, which are worth $3 million each, are awarded each year to scientists in math, physics, and the life sciences.</p><p>The life sciences prizes are given to scientists working on "understanding living systems and extending human life." At least one prize is reserved for research on <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/parkinsons-disease/basics/definition/con-20028488">Parkinson's disease</a> and neurodegenerative disorders.</p><p>Boyden and Deisseroth were among five life scientists to win the prize, which they won for developing a technique known as optogenetics. Optogenetics lets scientists, for the first time, not only measure brain activity, but actually change it.</p><p>The technique involves programming the brain cells of animals (such as mice) to express a protein found in jellyfish, called channel rhodopsin, which is activated when a light is shone on it. Scientists can then turn specific brain cells on or off in the animal's brain, controlling its thoughts or behavior.</p><h2>The remaining life sciences prizes went to:</h2><ul><li>John Hardy of University College London, who discovered tweaks in the gene for a protein that gives rise to early-onset Alzheimer's disease</li><li>Helen Hobbs of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who discovered human genes that control the amount of cholesterol and other fats that can cause heart or liver disease</li><li>Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Germany, who made it possible to read the DNA of our human ancestors.</li></ul><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5640b71ebd86ef175c8bd3f4-1200-1575/karl-deisseroth.jpg" alt="karl deisseroth.JPG" data-mce-source="Kimberly White" /><p class="source"><span>Kimberly White</span></p><p class="caption">Karl Deisseroth with his prize.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Groups of scientists won as well for various categories.</p><p>The prize in fundamental physics was awarded to more than 1,300 scientists investigating a quantum mechanical property of so-called "ghost particles," known as neutrino oscillation.</p><p>The math prize went to Ian Agol of the University of California Berkeley and the Institute for Advanced Study, for studies of low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory.</p><h2>Young breakthrough winners</h2><p>Plus, a new prize was introduced this year for "junior researchers." It was awarded to 18-year-old Ryan Chester of North Royalton High School, Ohio, for a <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> video about Einstein's Theory of special relativity. Chester got a $250,000 scholarship, his teacher received $50,000, and his school received a new $100,000 science lab.</p><p>The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and his wife Cathy Zhang, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and his wife Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/neuroscientist-antonio-damasio-on-genius-2015-8">A neuroscientist reveals what makes someone a genius</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Jkcmwydzp17WCH1_ZHRsTEy9ov0azq0d" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'Jkcmwydzp17WCH1_ZHRsTEy9ov0azq0d',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

These brilliant scientists each won $3 million for discovering a way to turn brain cells on or off using light

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59e92095909924b3208b55ab-2400/gettyimages-697523238.jpg" border="0" alt="GettyImages insect" data-mce-source="Dan Kitwood / Getty Images" data-link="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/697523238" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/697523238">Dan Kitwood / Getty Images</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is researching how to genetically modify crops using virus-carrying insects.</li><li>DARPA says the program could help protect crops from droughts, floods, and frost. It could also protect the US food supply from international attacks.</li><li>Some scientists and lawyers, however, say they believe the Insect Allies program is uncontrollable and could be engineered to kill plants instead.</li><li>Blake Bextine, Insect Allies' manager, dismissed the scientists' claims, saying researchers are including multiple emergency brakes in the system to shut the technology down if needed. </li></ul><p>A US government-funded project is studying how to genetically modify crops using virus-carrying insects in an effort to protect the country's food supply from threats.</p><p>The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started the four-year <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/program/insect-allies">Insect Allies program</a> in 2016 with a $45 million budget. The agency aims to arm plants with protective genes within one season, which would be much faster than changing crops through existing genetic engineering technologies that take multiple generations.</p><p>As the Insect Allies program pushes forward, some scientists and lawyers have voiced concerns about the research. In an October 4 <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6410/35">statement published in the journal Science</a>, they compared Insect Allies to biological weapons and said the program could lead to the destruction of numerous crops. </p><p>Guy Reeves, a researcher at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/science/darpa-gene-editing.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FAgriculture%20and%20Farming">told The New York Times</a> that he finds it difficult to picture how a virus that spreads through insects could ever be controlled.</p><p>"You haven't just released a transmissible virus - you've released a disease," Reeves told The Times. "The United States knows better than to return to a biological arms race."</p><p>Hours after the critics' statement was released, <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/DARPA%20Response%20to%20Science%20Opinion%20Piece%20-%20Oct%204%202018.pdf">DARPA defended its program</a>, which targets an "often under-appreciated element of national security." Blake Bextine, Insect Allies' manager, told The Times that the program has been transparent about its new technology. </p><p>"We're glad people are asking questions," Bextine told The Times. "But food security is national security. It stabilizes our society."</p><p>Over the past two years, scientists at a number of universities, including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas-Austin, have been running experiments for the project. DARPA has also invited representatives from the US Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency to its Insect Allies meetings.</p><p>DARPA hopes the new technology will let farmers grow food without worrying about losing crops due to frost, disease, droughts, floods, or attacks by other people. According to The Times, one of the crops being studied is maize, which is a vital food source for hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Latin America. </p><p>The critics, however, said DARPA work could serve as a blueprint for biological weapon production if the agency makes its research findings public. Instead of helping farmers, insects could be engineered to transmit viruses that kill plants, Reeves said.</p><p>"The mere announcement of this program may motivate other countries to develop their own capabilities in this arena - indeed, it may have already done so," the critics wrote, saying military operations in other countries often react to competitors' actions.</p><p>Critics said DARPA should focus on crop protection methods that already exist, such as aerial spraying, but the agency said this would have low precision and high costs. Bextine also told The Times that virus-carrying insects would not permanently change a plant's genome.</p><p>"If you see a drought coming, you can deploy the system to sustain a period of difficulty, and then go back to a natural state," Bextine told The Times. "We are developing tools that are futuristic, but they are based very much in reality. This is biology we understand very well."</p><p>On top of that, DARPA has asked its researchers to create at least three ways to shut the system down if needed.</p><p>Reeves, however, does not believe this is enough, according to The Times.</p><p>"I think this project was decided down one quiet corridor - an agency with intentionally little oversight that comes up with slightly crazy ideas - and top people in the Pentagon will be as shocked as I was," Reeves said.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-stop-brushing-teeth-2018-9">What happens if you stopped brushing your teeth</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/2KqqbAA9-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

A government-funded research project using insects to genetically modify crops could trigger a 'biological arms race,' scientists warn

<p><div class="image-container full"><div class="image"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/529f7a776bb3f7c62258f3fe-2383-1639/5_homo_heidelbergensis.jpg?maxX=800" border="0" alt="The Sima de los Huesos hominins ancient humans" width="800" /><p class="source">Javier Trueba, MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS</p><p class="caption">The Sima de los Huesos hominins lived approximately 400,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene.</p></div></div>Four-hundred-thousand-year-old human remains found deep in <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/resources/whats-hot/mystery-pit-bones-atapuerca-spain" target="_blank">the Pit of Bones</a> - a cave 43 feet under the ground in northern Spain - could hold the secrets of our origin. For now, however, the<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> first analysis of ancient human genetic material has created more questions than answers.</span></p>
<p>"Right now, we've basically generated a big question mark," study researcher Matthias Meyer, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?ref=science" target="_blank">told The New York Times</a>.</p>
<p><div class="image-container float_left"><div class="image"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/529f7a786bb3f7772558f3fc-1531-2161/4_homo_heidelbergensis.jpg" border="0" alt="ancient human Skeleton of a Homo heidelbergensis from Sima de los Huesos," width="480" /><p class="source">Javier Trueba, MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS</p><p class="caption">Skeleton of a Homo heidelbergensis from Sima de los Huesos, a unique cave site in Northern Spain.</p></div></div></p>
<p>The Pit of Bones was discovered in the 1970s and scientists have been studying it and the bones it contains ever since. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">So far they've found the bones of 28 <keyword id="1755509" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ancient-Humans">ancient humans</keyword>, tentatively classified as </span><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Homo heidelbergensis, </em><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">dating back hundreds of thousands of years.</span></p>
<p>The 400,000-year-old bones were originally thought to belong to ancient relatives of <keyword id="528865" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword>, a species of ancient hominin on a different branch of the evolutionary tree than our ancestors, based on their size and shape.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">But the new genetic information </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12788.html" target="_blank">published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> has thrown that assumption into question.</span></p>
<p>The researchers used a completely new technique to isolate the DNA from a thigh bone, which they say wouldn't even have been possible a year ago.</p>
<p>Previously, the oldest human DNA ever sequenced was a paltry 100,000 years old.</p>
<p>The genetic material they sequenced is not the DNA we traditionally think of but the specialized DNA that runs our cell's energy-making machine (the mitochondria) and is passed down only from the mother.</p>
<p>This mitochondrial DNA indicated that these ancient humans, though they looked like Neanderthals, were more genetically related (or, at least their mitochondria were) to another ancient human species, the Denisovians.</p>
<p>The Denisovians are a completely different, also dead, branch of the human evolutionary tree. They are known to have lived about 80,000 years ago in East Asia. The bones from those Denisovians don't look like Neanderthals or like the 400,000-year-old bones that researchers have found in the pit.</p>
<p><div class="image-container full"><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/529f7a75eab8ea0b4558f402-2000-597/3_figure2.jpg" border="0" alt="The thigh bone of a 400,000-year-old ancient human hominin from Sima de los Huesos, Spain" width="800" /><p class="source">Javier Trueba, MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS</p><p class="caption">The thigh bone of a 400,000-year-old hominin from Sima de los Huesos, Spain, was excavated by Arsuaga and his team. </p></div></div>Finding their DNA thousands of miles and hundreds of thousands of years away from where we thought Denisovians evolved throws everything we know about ancient humans and how they spread out around the globe and evolved into distinct species into question.</p>
<p>"It's extremely hard to make sense of," <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?ref=science" target="_blank">Meyer told The NYT</a>. "We still are a bit lost here."</p>
<p>The DNA isolated from these ancient bones suggests that there could have been many more species of ancient humans than we thought.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that these mysterious people found in the Pit of Bones were the evolutionary ancestors of both the Neanderthals and Denisovians. The mitochondrial DNA might have disappeared from the Neanderthals at some point but remained with the Denisovians, the researchers said.</p>
<p>This builds upon other findings, presented Nov. 18 at a meeting on ancient DNA at the Royal Society and reported by <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/mystery-humans-spiced-up-ancients-sex-lives-1.14196" target="_blank">Nature News</a>, that indicated that ancient humans interbred with not just Neanderthals and Denisovians, but <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-humans-had-sex-with-mystery-species-2013-12" target="_blank">also another mystery relative</a>. The researchers on that study suggest that it could have been the ancient human species <em>Homo erectus</em>, which came along a few million years ago, then disappeared from the fossil record right before modern humans.</p>
<p>Ben Shapiro, an ancient DNA researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?ref=science" target="_blank">suggested to The New York Times</a> that<em> Homo erectus</em> could be the species in the Pit of Bones as well.</p>
<p>The only way to find answers is to sequence more of the ancient DNA in the pit and from other ancient human fossils.</p>

400,000-Year-Old Hominin DNA Throws Everything We Know About Human Evolution Into Disarray

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5936a0f579474c87258b6b10-1200/site 2.jpg" alt="site 2" /><p class="source"><span>Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig</span></p><p class="caption">Anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin points to one of the finds, a crushed human skull whose eye orbits are visible just beyond his fingertip.</p>Precisely when and where did our species emerge? Anthropologists have struggled with that question for decades, and until now, scattered clues have suggested the answer lies somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, around 200,000 years ago.<p>But new evidence outlined in <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature22336">two</a> <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature22335">papers</a> published in the journal Nature challenges that hypothesis. Instead, the authors describe recently discovered remains that suggest the first <em>Homo sapiens </em>showed up more than 100,000 years earlier than we thought, in a place many experts didn't suspect.</p><p>The fossils could represent the earliest known examples of<em> Homo sapiens</em> ever found (if confirmed by further research), and serve as evidence that members of our species lived beyond sub-Saharan Africa.</p><h2>Skulls in the dust</h2><p>In 1961, a crew of miners was plowing into a dense wall of limestone in a hilly region west of Marrakesh when they struck a soft patch. The hardened beige surface gave way to a mound of cinnamon-colored dirt. Peeking out of the earth was a sliver of human skull.</p><p>A bit more digging revealed a nearly-complete skull, which the miners turned over to their field doctor. As word about the discovery spread, researchers flocked to the area. They uncovered more remains, including several pieces of jaw bone and a fragment of an arm. At the time, scientists pegged the fossils as roughly 40,000 years old, a few thousand years before our extinct European relatives, the Neanderthals, were thought to have vanished.</p><p>But they hadn't dug deep enough.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5936a0f579474cf4008b6ed1-1200/site 1.jpg" alt="site 1" /><p class="source"><span>Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig</span></p><p class="caption">The Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco.</p>Roughly 40 years later, anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin and his team from the Max Planck Institute excavated the half-dozen layers of soil beneath the land where the skull and arm bones had been discovered. There, the team found remains that they say belong to at least five individuals. Using a dating technique that measures how much radiation has built up in a material since it was heated, Hublin and his team say the ancient bones came from people who lived roughly 300,000-350,000 years ago. <p>"These dates were a big wow," Hublin said on a recent call with reporters.</p><p>Still, the biggest discovery didn't come until the team looked more closely at the skulls.</p><h2>A striking resemblance </h2><p>When Hublin peered into the cavernous eye sockets of one of the skulls, he was astonished.</p><p>Instead of the robust features he was accustomed to seeing on the faces of an ancient human ancestor like <em>Homo erectus</em> or <em>Homo heidelbergensis</em>, this face bore a striking resemblance to his own. Where an <em>erectus</em> skull had a single, protruding brow ridge, these individuals had smaller, separated ones. Rather than a large face and a flattened skull, these people had small faces and rounder skulls.</p><p>"The face of these people is really a face that falls right in the middle of the modern variation," said Hublin. "They had a skull that is more elongated than most of us, but I'm not sure these people would stand out from a crowd today."</p><p>Their braincase (shown below in blue) also seemed to fall somewhere between what one might expect in an ancient human ancestor and a modern human, albeit slightly more similar to those of our archaic ancestors.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5936a0ad79474c87258b6b0d-1200/skull 2.jpg" alt="skull 2" /><p class="source"><span>Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig</span></p><p>This unique combination of advanced and archaic features suggests something profound, Hublin said - he's convinced the Moroccan specimens "represent the very root of our species."</p><p>In other words, all of the <em>Homo sapiens</em> ever found - including those uncovered far beyond Africa - may trace their ancestral linkages to the land that is today's Morocco. </p><p>That suggestion contradicts the prevailing anthropological logic that our species evolved somewhere deep in sub-Saharan Africa, in what some researchers have referred to as a "Garden of Eden," then gradually moved out to other parts of the world. Instead, Hublin and his team argue that <em>Homo sapiens</em> could have been living in terrain across Africa.</p><p>"There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is, it is all of Africa," Hublin said.</p><p>According to <a href="http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/about/staff/srz.page">Sonia Zakrzewski</a>, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton, Hublin's discovery could encourage other archaeologists to change the way they think about human origins. "It really sets the world alight in terms of the possibilities for understanding the evolution of <em>Homo sapiens</em>," she said. "It certainly means that we need to rethink our models."</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-worlds-oldest-fossil-sparks-debate-among-scientists-2017-3">A fascinating new discovery is stirring up a huge scientific debate over the origin of life on Earth and beyond</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video                    

300,000-year-old skulls that look shockingly like us could rewrite the human origin story

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5148a5ff69bedd9e07000008-2045-1534/neandertaler-reconstruction-at-neanderthal-museum-mettmann-germany-2.jpg?maxX=400" border="0" alt="Neandertaler reconstruction at Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany" width="400" /></div><p class="source"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANeandertaler_reconst.jpg">Stefan Scheer</a></p></div>Following up on data they released in 2010 of the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18869-neanderthal-genome-reveals-interbreeding-with-humans.html">"draft" version of the neanderthal genome</a>, researchers at Germany's Max Plank Institute For Evolutionary Anthropology have just <a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/index.html">released a "high-quality" version of the genome</a>.</p>
<p>The genome sequence was generated from a toe bone of a neanderthal discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia.</p>
<p>"The genome is of very high quality," study researcher <a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/genetics/neandertal-genome/pdf/NEA_50X_announcement_SP_KP1_SP190313_JK.pdf">Kay Prüfer said in a statement [PDF]</a>. Instead of the once-over "draft" genome, this new version has sequenced every letter of the Neanderthal's DNA sequence 50 times over.</p>
<p>This individual seems to be closely related to other <keyword id="528865" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword> that have been partially sequenced, the researchers said. Neanderthals seem to have survived in Europe until around 30,000 years ago.</p>
<p>There are many theories about how the Neanderthals went extinct, but a recent theory indicates that their <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthal-brain-evolvution-extinction-2013-3">brains were more dedicated to vision</a> than modern humans, which left them less brainpower for other things.</p>
<p>This gives us a much better idea of the Neanderthal's <keyword id="6648078" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Genetics">genetics</keyword> — we are more sure of the individual changes that distinguish them from modern humans, <keyword id="1755509" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ancient-Humans">ancient humans</keyword>, other neanderthals, and other human-lineages, like the <keyword id="507203" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Denisovans">Denisovans</keyword>.</p>
<p>The Denisovans are a group of ancient humans that are closely related to Neanderthals and modern humans. They lived until at least 40,000 years ago in the same areas as Neanderthals and modern humans. Their <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6104/222">genome was sequenced last year</a> after their discovery in 2008.</p>
<p>Though the new Neanderthal genome hasn't been published or pushed through peer-review — an important step in scientific studies — they have made it <a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/index.html">freely available to the scientific community and the public. </a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/index.html"> </a>The paper they publish will also likely have more information about how the genome compares to other hominids.</p>
<p>"We are in the process of comparing this Neanderthal genome to the Denisovan genome as well as to the draft genomes of other Neanderthals," study researcher Svante Pääbo said. "We will gain insights into many aspects of the history of both Neanderthals and Denisovans and refine our knowledge about the genetic changes that occurred in the genomes of modern humans after they parted ways with the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans."</p>

Researchers Just Released The First High-Quality Neanderthal Genome Sequence

max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology

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