Monday, December 27, 2010

More on ancient human from Russia

Readers may remember the announcement made in March that a finger bone from a Russian cave represented a new species of human. Now we have learned more about the "Denisovans," as the writers have nicknamed these people from 41,000 years ago. Among other findings: some of their DNA shows up in modern people from Melanesia. That's a long way from southern Siberia, and complicates questions about human origins and migrations. As one researcher put it, "Instead of the clean story we used to have of modern humans migrating out of Africa and replacing Neanderthals, we now see these very intertwined storylines with more players and more interactions than we knew of before."
COMMENT: Also, this indicates the Denisovans may have migrated south, which increases speculation by cryptozoologists that they may not be extinct, and may represent the almas, reported primates generally described as primitive humans of some sort, from the Pamirs.

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