ABOVE: Upper molar of a male Neanderthal from which researchers extracted Y chromosome DNA
I. CREVECOEUR
The Neanderthal Y chromosome is much more closely related to the Y of modern humans than to the Y of Denisovans, another archaic hominin that lived in Eurasia at the same time as Neanderthals, according to a study published today (September 24) in Science. This stands in stark contrast to the rest of the nuclear genome, which has clearly placed Neanderthals and Denisovans as sister groups in a lineage that split from the ancestors of modern humans. The Y chromosome data—the first from Denisovans and the first high-coverage from Neanderthals—suggest that earlier Neanderthals had a Denisovan-like Y chromosome, but that this was replaced by the Y chromosome of modern humans after Neanderthals interbred with them between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago.
“It’s a really a great surprise,” says Mikkel Heide Schierup, an evolutionary biologist at ...
