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Category Archives: DNA

Clues to an ancient mystery

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by physicalanthropologymzi in DNA, First Americans, Human evolution

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Picture of the skull of a young woman believed to be an early American

Naia, one of the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas (Hoyo Negro, Mexico), is  the earliest one intact enough to provide a foundation for a facial reconstruction. Geneticists were even able to extract a sample of DNA. Looking at the skeletal remains of Paleo-Americans, more than half of men have injuries caused by violence, and four out of ten have skull fractures. The wounds seem to be the result of the violent fight among them. The women don’t have these kinds of injuries, but they’re much smaller than the men, with signs of malnourishment and domestic abuse.

According to the archaeologist Jim Chatters, co-leader of the Hoyo Negro research team, these are all indications that the earliest Americans were what he calls “Northern Hemisphere wild-type” populations: bold and aggressive, with hypermasculine males and diminutive, subordinate females. And this, he thinks, is why the earliest Americans’ facial features look so different from those of later Native Americans. These were risk-taking pioneers, and the toughest men were taking the spoils and winning fights over women. As a result, their robust traits and features were being selected over the softer and more domestic ones evident in later, more settled populations.

Sin título

Sin título

Skeletal remains suggest that Paleo-American men ate better, grew larger and lived much longer than women, most of whom died before age 26. Modern native American men have tended to be smaller than their ancestors, and women larger as we can see in the picture.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/first-americans/hodges-text

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/first-americans/clues-graphic

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The oldest bone found in Euskadi

11 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by physicalanthropologymzi in DNA

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In August of 1964, a humerus was found by Jose Miguel Barandiarán and Jesus Altuna in the Lezetxiki cave in Mondragón, Gipuzkoa. After 50 years of the finding, scientist have determined the age of this bone. The humerus, which is 164, 000 years old, is one of the oldest remains of the peninsula, the oldest found in Euskadi. Just a couple of remains of Atapuerca are more ancient than this one.

Jesus Altuna, one of the paleoanthropologists that found the bone, has remarked that even if until now the age of the bone was not set, they knew that the remain was older than 120,000 years because in an upper level of the cave they found pieces of the skull of a bear who lived before the cave bears and was extinguished in Europe by this period.

The study was carried out in the National University of Australia and they used the uranium/lead method to determinate the age because the ressults obtained by the C14 would be inconclusive. They have also obtained the DNA from the humerus in order to identify the species and the sex of this remain.

Lezetxikin aurkitutako humeroa, atzean; lehen lerroan, erreplika. /

http://www.diariovasco.com/culturas/201412/10/confirman-humero-lezetxiki-resto-20141210125942.html

http://www.berria.eus/albisteak/106218/lezetxikin_aurkitutako_humeroak_gutxienez_164000_urte_ditu.htm

http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2014/12/10/paisvasco/1418224851_671135.html

http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20141210/54421702200/el-humero-de-lezetxiki-se-aleja-de-los-neandertales-y-se-acerca-a-atapuerca.html

From ancient bone to modern human

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by physicalanthropologymzi in DNA, hominin lineage, Neanderthals, physical anthropology

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Recently scientist decode the DNA from leg bone found by chance on the bank of a Siberian river which has helped work out when early humans interbred with our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals. 

Mysterious Siberian bone(s):

Radiocarbon dating of pieces of the leg bone put the remains at around 45,000 years old. The scientist went on to extract DNA from the bone, which allowed them to reconstruct the oldest modern human genome ever.

Prior to the latest study, the oldest modern human genome came from the 24,000-year-old remains of a boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in easterbn Siberia. (More information in our earlier article)

Neanderthales and modern humans met and shared DNA earlier than we thought

About 2 per cent of many people’s genomes today is made up of Neanderthal DNA, a result of interbreeding between the two species that can be seen in everyone except people from sub-Saharan Africa. The so-called Ust’-Ishim man, named after the town in western Siberia where he was found, carries a similar proportion of Neanderthal DNA in his genome as present-day Eurasians, and a combination of radiocarbon and genetic dating shows he died only about 45,000 years ago.

Featured image

Neanderthal DNA specialist Svante Pääbo examines the anatomically modern human femur, found near Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia. 

By comparing Ust’-Ishim’s genome to various groups of modern and ancient humans, the researchers are filling in gaps in the map of initial human migrations around the globe. They found that he is as genetically similar to present-day East Asians as to ancient genomes found in Western Europe and Siberia, suggesting that the population he was part of split from the ancestors of both Europeans and East Asians, prior to their divergence from each other.

References:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/22/ancient-human-bone-sex-neanderthals-oldest-genome-dna

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26435-thoroughly-modern-humans-interbred-with-neanderthals.html#.VFEVZvmG9NM

European mystery

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by physicalanthropologymzi in DNA, Origin of human

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Origin of human being that is the question. New research publicized in Nature can shed some light on the origin of European population and show that is not so easy how we thought.

How look our ancestors?

Picture 1 Life of hunter-gatherers. (author Zdeněk Burian)

Till now the DNA remains have showed that our European genome had its origin from the ancient hunter-gatherers living in European continent for thousands of years (since 45 000 years ago) and the first farmers which came from Near East (area of modern Syria, Iraq and Israel) around 7500 years ago – from the place where the first agriculture has occurred. The parts of their DNA could be found till now in our genetic information. It shows how has agriculture changed and influenced prehistoric lifestyle, but this is not enough.

The third missing piece of puzzle

Prof David Reich from the Harvard Medical School and colleagues studied the genomes of seven hunter-gatherers from Scandinavia, one hunter whose remains were found in a cave in Luxembourg (  ̴8000-years-old),  and another early farmer from Stuttgart, Germany (  ̴7000-years-old) and compare the data with 2,354 present day people. And they found, that there is something missing – the third population.

Another discover of ancient remains of  24,000 year old boy buried near the Lake Baikal in Siberia and comparation of his genome with modern Europeans showed that Siberians are the missing piece of puzzle in genetic richness of European population.  This people called ancient north Eurasians are probably also the brave adventures, which crossed the frozen sea and founded the population of Native Americans around 15,000 years ago.

When did they come to the Europe?

Answer for this question is also suggested by this researchers group. They looked for the signs of Siberian genome in ancient remains from Europe but they couldn’t find them. It shows that their arrival to Europe was later, after farming was already established in Europe.

Featured image

Picture 2  Possible ways of migration of the ancient people to Europe

Now are modern Europeans various mixes of the three populations. For example Sardinians are more than 80% early European farmer, with less than 1% of their genetic contribution coming from the ancient north Eurasians. Or the modern English get around 50% of their genes from early European farmers, 36% from western European hunter-gatherers, and 14% from the ancient north Eurasians.

What happened at that time? Hom and why migrated these people to Europe? Who are our ancestors? There still remain a lot of questions but some of them are already answered.

Refereneces:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v513/n7518/full/nature13673.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/17/us-science-europeans-idUSKBN0HC20H20140917

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/18/ancient-ancestors-europeans-dna-study

Picture 1 http://www.praha.eu/public/5c/e8/a9/1329300_221801_burian_lovci_mamutu.jpg

Picture 2

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77640000/gif/_77640634_europe_ancient_farmers_20140917-01.gif

Neanderthals, our close relatives

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by physicalanthropologymzi in DNA, hominin lineage, Neanderthals

≈ Leave a comment

The neanderthal man became extinct 40,000 years ago

45,000 years ago the european continent was mainly inhabited by the neanderthals, and a few individuals of the “new” human specie originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. 5,000 years later, the neanderthals were completely extinct, and the new human specie was widespread through the whole continent. In this short period that both species lived together, there was a cultural and genetic transmission.

And how neanderthal are you?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm

Scientific have found that Eurasian people share between 1-4% of our DNA with neanderthals.The genes we share with them are especially involved in creating keratin filaments but also have relation with the immune system. These genes were kept in our genome because they were useful in our evolution and in our adaptation to different environments. However, there are some genes that affect the risk of several diseases, including lupus, biliary cirrhosis, Crohn’s disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Neanderthal sequences are typically inherited in large batches, since they were imported into the modern human genome relatively recently and have not had time to break apart.

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2014/08/20/actualidad/1408560484_855396.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140129-neanderthal-genes-genetics-migration-africa-eurasian-science/

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