denisovan

Research traces the evolution of a gene variant that reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, finding that it originally evolved in response to infectious bacteria.

The new fossil from Laos helps answer the question of how some people from Oceania carry DNA from the ancient hominin.

Ancient and modern genomes reveal that a variant of the human growth hormone receptor likely helped our ancestors survive when food was scarce.

Analysis of DNA from remains found in an Indonesian cave provides new insight into human movements among the islands between East Asia and Australia.

Researchers found the relatively high proportion of DNA from a hominin cousin—nearly 5 percent—when they scanned more than 1,000 genomes from 118 distinct ethnic groups.

The genomes of living animals are littered with DNA from long-gone relatives, providing a lens on evolution, past extinctions, and perhaps even solutions to agricultural problems.

A massive, well-preserved skull discovered in China in the 1930s belongs to a new species called Homo longi, researchers report, but experts remain skeptical about the evidence.

Using CRISPR to swap an archaic variant of the NOVA1 gene into human stem cells, researchers create organoids with neurodevelopmental differences from those carrying modern DNA.

A selective advantage may have led the modern human Y chromosome to sweep through the Neanderthal population after it was introduced via interbreeding more than 100,000 years ago.

Africa’s sparse fossil record alone cannot reveal our species’ evolutionary history.

A study points to the existence of an ancient human relative that interbred with Homo sapiens.

A mandible dating to 160,000 years ago is the first evidence of Denisovan hominins outside the Russian cave where they were first discovered in 2010.

A finding pushes back the timeline on humankind’s conquest of one of Earth’s harshest environments, and may provide clues about interactions with their hominin relatives.

Denisovans and Neanderthals likely overlapped at this Stone Age hot spot for thousands of years, and modern Homo sapiens may have dwelled there, too.  

Genetic analysis of a bone fragment reveals the girl’s mixed ancestry 90,000 years ago. 

Three members of a gene family called NOTCH2NL may have been involved in the evolution of humans’ big cortex.

Researchers find that modern human populations carry distinct sets of genes from the extinct hominin species.

The retention of ancient hominin DNA in modern human genomes may have helped our ancestors adapt to life in diverse environments. 

Nuclear DNA from 430,000-year-old specimens indicates that Neanderthals had already diverged from their ancient-human predecessors.