Hey, sex happens. And apparently, whenever our ancestors met up with other members of the genus Homo, it happened a lot. New genetic analysis published today reveals previously unidentified evidence of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, a branch of our family tree not even known to science until a decade ago.
You remember the Denisovans, right? Researchers uncovered a piece of pinky finger and a few other fossil fragments in Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, in the late ’00s. The full significance of the discovery wasn’t really appreciated until 2010, however, when genetic analysis revealed that the bones belonged not to H. sapiens or Neanderthals, both of whom frequented the site, but to a completely new species of hominin.
Since that discovery, teams have been combing through DNA from both ancient samples and modern populations, hunting for evidence of interbreeding between the Denisovans and our own species. Researchers already have significant data that H. sapiens interbred with Neanderthals multiple times, so it seemed a good bet that there was also a bit of hominin hanky-panky between us and the Denisovans.
