A technological feat — extraction of human DNA from fossils nearly half a million years old — has revised the timeline for our species.
The samples came from Spain’s Sima de los Huesos cave, which has yielded the largest hominin fossil collection from the Middle Pleistocene, 130,000 to 780,000 years ago. During this murky chapter in human evolution, one branch of early Homo evolved into modern humans in Africa. A second branch spread north, later splitting into Neanderthals in Europe and Denisovans in Asia.
The oldest hominin DNA ever analyzed revealed that the individuals found at Spain’s Sima de los Huesos site, re-created here by an artist, were proto-Neanderthals. Kennis & Kennis/MSF/Science Source
Based on the Sima hominins’ physical similarities and the site’s European location, some researchers assumed they were the branch that gave rise to Neanderthals. But in 2014, researchers analyzing mitochondrial DNA from one Sima sample found it ...
