DNA can change everything. Thanks to the analysis of nuclear DNA (or molecule of life) of the remains of more than 400,000 years old found in the Sima de los Huesos in Atapuerca (Spain), scientists have managed to solve the great mystery about the origin of these 28 individuals : the hominids of Atapuerca belonged to the evolutionary lineage of the Neanderthals.
These hominids, who lived near the Sima de los Huesos about 430,000 years ago , were similar in stature to ours, although with more robust and wider bodies. Since mitochondrial DNA associated them with Denisovans (Homo denisova) and their bones were associated with Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ), their exact origin was an enigma. Up to now.
First, a team of scientists managed to sequence in 2013 the almost complete mitochondrial genome (inherited from the mother) of a human femur, showing that the hominins of Sima de los Huesos were evolutionarily related to Denisovans. Since then, experts have worked to sequence the nuclear DNA (inherited from both the mother and the father), from the fossils found in the cave.
Innovative genome sequencing technologies at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) have finally made it possible to sequence nuclear DNA in a second femur and an incisor. The results corroborate that these hominids were actually primitive Neanderthals.
“We have waited many years for palaeogenetic techniques to have advanced enough for this little miracle to occur . We excavate with the utmost care and enormously slowly so as not to contaminate the fossils with our own DNA ”, Juan Luis Arsuaga, scientific director of the Museum of Human Evolution of Burgos and co-author of the work, explains to SINC.
The study has been published in the journal Nature.
