Identificado ADN Antiguo apodado "X-Woman". DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed 'X-woman

Acaba de parecer en la BBC, un reportaje del periodista científico Paul Rincon, también ha aparecido un reportaje en el diario Público en su sección de ciencias al respecto. Os lo dejamos en ingles, pero si necesitais traducción sólo teneis que poneros en contacto con nosotros

The "Hobbit" persisted until 12,000 years ago on Flores

DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed 'X-woman

Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave. The extinct "hominin" (human-like creature) lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago.An international team has sequenced genetic material from the fossil showing that it is distinct from that of Neanderthals and modern humans.Details of the find, dubbed "X-woman", have been published in Nature journal.Ornaments were found in the same ground layer as the finger bone, including a bracelet.Professor Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London's Natural History Museum, called the discovery "a very exciting development""This new DNA work provides an entirely new way of looking at the still poorly-understood evolution of humans in central and eastern Asia."The discovery raises the intriguing possibility that three forms of human - Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and the species represented by X-woman - could have met each other and interacted in southern Siberia.The tiny fragment of bone from a fifth finger was uncovered by archaeologists working at Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains in 2008.An international team of researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from the bone and compared the genetic sequence with those from modern humans and Neanderthals.Origin unknownMitochondrial DNA comes from the cell's powerhouses and is passed down the maternal line only.The analysis carried out by Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues revealed the human from Denisova last shared a common ancestor with modern humans and Neanderthals about one million years ago.This is known as the divergence date; essentially, when this human's ancestors split away from the line that eventually led to Neanderthals and ourselves.The Neanderthal and modern human evolutionary lines diverged much later, around 500,000 years ago. This shows that the individual from Denisova is the representative of a previously unknown human lineage that derives from a hitherto unrecognised migration out of Africa.