Interbreeding Surprise! More Denisovans in Our Family Tree

By Gemma Tarlach | March 15, 2018 11:00 am
denisovan molar

Genetic analysis reveals new evidence of Homo sapiens interbreeding with Denisovans, an extinct species closely related to Neanderthals and known from a handful of fossils, such as this replica molar. (Credit: Thilo Parg/Wikimedia Commons)

Hey, sex happens. And apparently, whenever our ancestors met up with other members of the genus Homo, it happened a lot. New genetic analysis published today reveals previously unidentified evidence of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, a branch of our family tree not even known to science until a decade ago.

You remember the Denisovans, right? Researchers uncovered a piece of pinky finger and a few other fossil fragments in Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, in the late ’00s. The full significance of the discovery wasn’t really appreciated until 2010, however, when genetic analysis revealed that the bones belonged not to H. sapiens or Neanderthals, both of whom frequented the site, but to a completely new species of hominin.

Since that discovery, teams have been combing through DNA from both ancient samples and modern populations, hunting for evidence of interbreeding between the Denisovans and our own species. Researchers already have significant data that H. sapiens interbred with Neanderthals multiple times, so it seemed a good bet that there was also a bit of hominin hanky-panky between us and the Denisovans.

And, lo and behold, studies did uncover evidence of Denisovan ancestry in modern H. sapiens populations, in certain parts of Asia, especially Oceania, including Indonesia’s Papua province, where locals’ DNA was up to about 5 percent Denisovan-derived. (For comparison, about 2 percent of the DNA of most non-Africans alive today comes courtesy of past Neanderthal interbreeding events.)

In 2014, Nature published a study that found a variation of a gene, which regulates hemoglobin and is present in modern Tibetans, was inherited from Denisovans. The genetic hand-me-down is likely what made it possible for people to live at 13,000 feet or more above sea level in the oxygen-sparse air of the Himalayas.

Today, however, applying a new data-modeling method to more than 5,600 genomes from modern populations, researchers identified surprising new details about interbreeding between H. sapiens and Denisovans: It appears different populations of the two hominins interbred multiple times.

In parts of China and Japan, people inherited most of their Denisovan DNA from one population of the archaic humans, but Papuans in Oceania got theirs from a different Denisovan lineage.

Researchers uncovered genetic evidence of at least two separate interbreeding events between Denisovans and Homo sapiens. (Credit Browning et al)

(Credit Browning et al)

Mixing It Up

What’s particularly interesting about this unexpected discovery is that the Denisovan-derived DNA seen in modern Papuans stands out even more than it did before. To understand why, consider that the amount of Denisovan DNA in modern Chinese and Japanese genomes included in the study is only about 0.2 percent, significantly less than the roughly 5 percent of the Denisovan contribution to modern Papuans. That 0.2 percent of Denisovan-derived DNA in East Asian genomes turns out to be closely related to the original Altai Denisovan genome sequenced in 2010.

(Sidenote: Although it’s closely related, researchers can’t determine whether the 2010 genome was part of the same lineage that’s directly ancestral to modern East Asian genomes.)

The Denisovans who contributed to the modern Papuan genome, however, were from a completely different population. The finding hints that Denisovans were both spread over a larger geographic area than currently known and ran into H. sapiens more often than once thought.

In other words, to continue a theme that has popped up a number of times in the past few years, the story of human evolution is looking increasingly more complex. Our family tree is not the neat and stately oak-like diagram that still graces many textbooks, with H. sapiens at the apex, of course, but rather a bush of tangled branches.

Getting Species-Specific

Right about now, I know you may be thinking “wait a minute, if H. sapiens and Denisovans and Neanderthals are all separate species, how could they interbreed? Doesn’t that contradict the very definition of a species?” Well, yes. And no.

Consider, for example, that coyotes and wolves can interbreed despite being recognized as separate species. Other examples abound in the wild, including some species of bear.

But more to the point when discussing members of the genus Homo, speciation doesn’t happen overnight: It takes thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years.

According to the best information researchers have right now, based on the fairly new field of ancient DNA analysis, two populations of an as-yet-uncertain member of Homo (because some will swear it was H. erectus, others not, let’s call them Homo X) became isolated from each other somewhere between 550,000-750,000 years ago. One of those populations of Homo X was on its way into evolving into H. sapiens. The other split again, probably 380,000-480,000 or so years ago, into what would become Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Again, these splits didn’t happen in a generation or two. These were gradual processes, with the end game being separate and distinct species that should not have been able to interbreed.

Before speciation was completed, however, the different populations met up again, got busy, and successfully procreated, shuffling DNA and tangling up the branches of the family tree.

In fact, the key point from today’s research, says lead author Sharon Browning, via email from the University of Washington, is “the fact that these multiple interbreeding events occurred strongly suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans were not so very different from us.”

Today’s research appears in Cell.

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Living World, top posts
MORE ABOUT: aDNA, Denisovans

Comments (26)

  1. RebelSoldier

    Good story. The details. I, myself, according to the Nat. Geo DNA test, am only 1.2 % Neanderthal. And I easily remember the stories on line about a decade ago insisting we had never mixed with these humans. But modern DNA tests tossed our “knowledge” on the issue into the trash with those floppy discs we once used. Maybe, probably, advances in the tools we have to look at DNA results will grow so refined that will be able to completely model the intellect and culture of our different cousins. That would be fascinating.

    • OWilson

      We taught British history as a series of invaders.

      “WE” were invaded by, and we memorized almost by rote, “Angles, Romans, Saxons, Danes, Jutes, Vikings and Normans.

      Would my dear old history teacher, bless her, be surprised that “WE”, according to my DNA, were the actual invaders, who overwhelmed the poor ancient Brits! 🙂

      But anthropology continues its march to enlightenment.

      No “Settled Science” in this field at least! 🙂

    • Raimo Kangasniemi

      Apparently you don’t understand how science in this case works.
      There are no direct father-son or mother-daughter lineages surviving from Neanderthals to modern humans. No mitochondrial lineages handed from Neanderthal women to modern women and now to their offspring.
      That is the ‘”knowledge”‘ you claim were ‘tossed out’. It hasn’t been tossed out. It still stands.
      From this was drawn the idea that Neanderthals had no contribution to modern humans.
      Only when parts of modern human genome could be compared to Neanderthal genome could surviving parts of Neanderthal genome in modern humans found out.
      This has also shown that claims of Neanderthal physical features in such specimens as the supposed 24 000-year-old ‘hybrid’ from Portugal are wrong; that person would have had almost the same amount of Neanderthal heritage than currently living humans and would have had very, very limited effect on physical features – not something that would stand out from skeletal remains as claimed.

      • RebelSoldier

        Got an agenda?

        • Raimo Kangasniemi

          I seem to be only one commenting in this article whose only agenda is scientific accuracy.

          • OWilson

            “I’m surprised that you have been able to learn to write.”


            “I’m surprised that you have been able to learn to write”


            You don’t even know how stupidly ignorant you sound!


            But welcome to the thread, anyway! 🙂

          • RebelSoldier
      • Dwight E Howell

        No. I’d bet money the hybrid has never been tested. Got a link showing otherwise.

    • schizoafekt

      Man, few years ago we named those “denisovian inheritage” as pure Homo sapiens genes. Also we used to name neantherdal people as “Homo sapiens neantherdal” and us as “homo sapiens sapiens” – not different genres, but subgenres or races.

  2. Every day in every way, less and less “Out of Africa.”
    Social Justice travels Roots‘ fictive road

    • OWilson

      I’m surprised these politically incorrect contrary researchers can actually get grant money!

      • Raimo Kangasniemi

        I’m surprised that you have been able to learn to write.
        I’m sure you have no complaints about comments like that – being supporter of political incorrectness.

        • OWilson

          All comments welcome!

          • Kamran Rowshandel

            Hitler was kinda politically correct almost but what a smart guy! He didn’t read enough to know who was related to Hebrews and put a “kick me” sign on blue-eyed peoples’ corneas instead of using the part of his brain her used for fashion to perhaps say the Talmud is fascist and that’s why HEBREWS are claiming genetic superiority in a vicious cycle without getting any punch to the nose even though half their book is the racist word BEGAT. Seriously if Hitler had 1/2 a brain cell his poor family wouldn’t have become a ..cussword

    • Raimo Kangasniemi

      You probably understood as little of the article above as yo understood Roots – based on your comment.

      • I taught terms of Organic Lab filled with premeds. If it wasn’t in the sample vial, you got dinged. If you cheated, you earned a 0.0. Long term, I saved more people than Lourdes – not out of pride or arrogance, but merely by maintaining standards.

        But that is not fair! Damned straight it’s not fair – by being rigorously fair. March or die.

    • Jenny H

      Uncle Al, according to this ‘infographic’, modern humans did not exist in Africa! To me it rather suggests that humans evolved first in Africa but new varieties developed in Europe and Asia to because of the different environmental influences.

      • Kamran Rowshandel

        Greater primates originated in Africa & then we left and picked up genes from places around the world, like, Asian noses for example are a feature of Chinese snub-nosed monkeys who have had that nose since before any of us did, because somehow we have genes from many primates that the primates don’t have in common and from all of the greater primates that they don’t have in common, and after everyone wore some of these genes we all came back to Africa and our kids were human.

        Afterward, everyone begat from the Ethiopian-Bedoin-Hebrew family tree spread propaganda about people with different skin color and that’s why traditional African music sounds like they’re saying “I’m sad my family is severed because the bright skinned ones have been severed from us and through the constant tears my heart sheds there are moments of divine truth I avert my perspective from”.

        To this day, you can still see how they force others to work in a post-automated world. Then claim their genetically-intertwined “monotheism” isn’t fascist or an assertion of violent gebetic superiority.

        Honestly, I think those desert-dwellers only every got genes from Hamadryas baboons because they got trapped in the desert real bad and that’s why instead of others chimp features that I have, they have that watermelon-slice-eating lip/mouth that is a dominant trait and no one else has.

        Their racism is disgusting and people like Al should be spliced with altruistic genes by a cunning virus.

    • Kamran Rowshandel

      Why would anyone leave a lush continent? Escape propaganda?

  3. Raimo Kangasniemi

    ‘Indonesia’s Papua province’ is the occupied West Papua, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by Indonesia since 1963 with the aid of United States and Australia especially.
    Illegal Indonesian settlers now form majority in West Papua because of the genocide and ‘resettling’.

  4. vinder

    So it looks like the ethnic differences evident among humans is because we literally mated with different species.

  5. Dan Develop

    That explains democrats

  6. Jenny H

    And Europeans are STILL mixing with Asians, and Africans and Australian and American natives. When will it stop! (being amazed that different humans from different areas actually interbred, that is!

  7. schizoafekt

    Can’t we use those DNA to model model of how Denisovian used to look like?


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