From a child’s pinky finger found in a central Asian cave,a new type of prehistoric human has been discovered.
A geneticist at the university of Manchester in the U.K.,Terry Brown said that they had no inkling that this thing existed.That in itself was a remarkable discovery.This is the first time that a new human species has been identified solely on the basis of DNA.
Unknown to the present science this new human discovery implies that there was a wave of human migration out of Africa,the birthplace of human.
The fossilized pinky bone was discovered in a cave called Denisova an the Altay mountains of southern Serbia,Russia.Experts involved in the discovery can’t if it was a boy or girl though the pinky’s owner has been dubbed X-woman.It is thought that this pinky bone is of child between 5 to 7 years.
DNA extracted from the fossil reavels that it is significantly different from the DNA of modern humans.But so far only mtDNA has been extracted,mtDNA contains less information than nuclear DNA that contains most of a body’s genetic information.mtDNA of the child was much easier to read as there are several thousand copies of mtDNA per cell.
The study of child’s mtDNA suggests that hominid belonged to a species that last shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals and modern humans about a million years ago.
A new type of human is thought to be appeared,but X-woman is truly a new species.
The different criteria to determine the distinct species are inability to interbreed,genetic dissimilarityand anatomical variation.But it’s impossible to determine whether any of these criteria apply to the Denisova child based solely on mtDNA.
For this reason,study co-leaders are planning to harvest nuclear DNA from the fossil for analysis.Untill they are refusing to call X-woman a new species.
It may be possible to one day to reconstruct the Denisova child’s fearures from its DNA,but that’s a long way in the future,Green said,who did not participate in the research.
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Discovery of new type of prehistoric human from child’s finger.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Posted by milan at 12:45 AM
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