#ancient-dna

#ancient-dna

Researchers have discovered the naturally mummified and skeletal remains of 61 cheetahs, which were hidden deep inside caves in northern Saudi Arabia for hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years. The find indicates that these big cats roamed the Arabian Peninsula for millennia before they disappeared from the landscape between 49 and 188 years agoevidence that bolsters an effort to rewild the region with modern-day cheetahs, according to Ahmed Boug, general director of the National Center for Wildlife in Riyadh.

Collectively, the genetic variants in this population are outside the range of previously described human diversity. What's distinct? Estimates of the timing of when this ancient south African population branched off from any modern-day populations place the split at over 200,000 years ago, or roughly around the origin of modern humans themselves. But this wasn't some odd, isolated group; estimates of population size based on the frequency of genetic variation suggest it was substantial.

We found this new lineage, a new group of people we didn't know about before, that has persisted as the main ancestry component for at least the last 8,000 years up to the present day.

Scientists have long speculated what caused the downfall of the Neanderthals, but a new study suggests they never truly went extinct at all. Scientists in Italy and Switzerland claim the ancient group of archaic humans didn't experience a 'true extinction' because their DNA exists in people today. Over as little as 10,000 years, our species, Homo sapeins, mated and produced offspring with Neanderthals as part of a gradual 'genetic assimilation'.

Geneticist Svante Paabo demonstrated that DNA can be extracted from human fossils that are thousands of years old. His team was the first to sequence the complete genome of Neanderthals, our closest human relatives, and discovered that Homo Sapiens had sex and children with them. He also revealed the existence of a third, previously unknown human lineage, the Denisovans, thanks to genetic material extracted from a tiny bone of a girl who lived in a Siberian cave some 50,000 years ago.

And while the history of the combustion engines that eventually replaced horses is well understood, precisely how and when our ancestors transformed wild animals into docile and rideable domestic companions has been debated, pieced together from studies of ancient teeth and bones. But a new study of ancient DNA sheds light on how modern horses came to be, pinpointing key genetic changes that shaped their bodies and behavior, helping make the wild animals more docile and rideable.

Pathogens have been a constant threat to human health throughout our evolutionary history. Infectious diseases are estimated to have been responsible for more than half of all children deaths before age 15.