mtDNA sucks for inferring hominin relationships

March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 / zcofran / 1 Comment

Ancient DNA studies keep on delivering awesome findings about human evolution. Continuing this trend, Matthias Meyer and colleagues report today in Nature nuclear DNA (nDNA) sequenced from ~430,000 year old humans from the Sima de los Huesos (SH) site in Spain. SH is badass not only because the name translates as “pit of bones,” but also because the pit has yielded hordes of fossils comprising at least 28 people (Bermudez de Castro et al., 2004), and some of these bones preserve the oldest human DNA yet recovered (Meyer et al., 2013).

Point 1 in Northern Spain, is Sima de los Huesos. The rest of the points are other sites where hominin fossils preserve ancient DNA. Figure 1. From Meyer et al. 2013.

Anatomically, the SH hominins have been interpreted as “pre-Neandertals,” having many, but not all, of the characteristics of geologically younger fossils we know as Neandertals. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) obtained from one of the SH femurs was found, surprisingly,to be more similar to Densivan than to Neandertal mtDNA (Meyer et al., 2013), not what would be expected if the SH hominins were early members of the Neandertal lineage. Meyer et al. interpreted this to mean that perhaps the SH hominins were ancestral to both Neandertals and Denisovans, though they noted that nDNA would be necessary to uncover the true relationships between these fossil groups.

Writing about the SH mtDNA in 2013, I noted that mtDNA has failed to reflect hominin relationships before. The distinctiveness of Denisovan mtDNA initially led to the idea that they branched off before the Neandertal-modern human population divergence (Kraus et al. 2010), and therefore that humans and Neandertals formed a clade. Later, nDNA proved Denisovans and Neandertals to be more closely related to one another than to humans (Reich et al., 2010). Then I’m all like, “Hopefully we’ll be able to get human nuclear DNA from Sima de los Huesos. When we do, I predict we’ll see the same kind of twist as with the Denisova DNA, with SH being more similar to Neandertals.”

I made that prediction right before telling Josh Baskin he’d be big.

And lo, Meyer et al. (2016) managed to wring a little bit more DNA out of this sample, and what do they find: “nuclear DNA sequences from two specimens … show that the Sima de los Huesos hominins were related to Neandertals rather than Denisovans” (from the paper abstract).

This is not a surprising outcome. The SH hominins look like Neandertals, and mtDNA acts a single genetic locus – the gene tree is unlikely to reflect the species tree. What’s more, this is similar to the story mtDNA told about human and Neandertal admixture. The lack of Neandertal mtDNA in any living (or fossil) humans was taken to reflect a lack of admixture between early humans and derelict Neandertals, but more recent nDNA analysis have clearly shown that our ancestors couldn’t help but become overcome with lust at the sight of Neandertals (and Denisovans) in Eurasia.

So here ancient DNA corroborates the anatomy that suggested the SH hominins were early members of the Neandertal lineage. This new study also raises the question as to what’s going on with mtDNA lineages – Meyer et al. suggest that the SH mtDNA was characteristic of early Neandertals, later to be replaced by the mtDNA lineage possessed by known Neandertals. They suggest an African origin for this new mtDNA, though I don’t see what that has to be the case. It also raises the question whether the difference in early (SH) vs. later Neandertal mtDNA reflects local population turnover/replacement, or a selective sweep of an adaptive mtDNA variant. Either way, Meyer et al. have done a remarkable job of making astounding discoveries from highly degraded, very short bits of super old DNA. I can’t wait to see what ancient DNA surprises are yet to come.

References
Bermudez de Castro, JM., Martinón-Torres, M., Lozano, M., Sarmiento, S., & Muela, A. (2004). Paleodemography of the Atapuerca: Sima De Los Huesos Hominin Sample: A Revision and New Approaches to the Paleodemography of the European Middle Pleistocene Population Journal of Anthropological Research, 60 (1), 5-26 DOI: 10.1086/jar.60.1.3631006

Krause, J., Fu, Q., Good, J., Viola, B., Shunkov, M., Derevianko, A., & Pääbo, S. (2010). The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia Nature, 464 (7290), 894-897 DOI: 10.1038/nature08976

Meyer, M., Fu, Q., Aximu-Petri, A., Glocke, I., Nickel, B., Arsuaga, J., Martínez, I., Gracia, A., de Castro, J., Carbonell, E., & Pääbo, S. (2013). A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos Nature, 505 (7483), 403-406 DOI: 10.1038/nature12788

Meyer, M., Arsuaga, J., de Filippo, C., Nagel, S., Aximu-Petri, A., Nickel, B., Martínez, I., Gracia, A., de Castro, J., Carbonell, E., Viola, B., Kelso, J., Prüfer, K., & Pääbo, S. (2016). Nuclear DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature17405

Reich, D., Green, R., Kircher, M., Krause, J., Patterson, N., Durand, E., Viola, B., Briggs, A., Stenzel, U., Johnson, P., Maricic, T., Good, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Alkan, C., Fu, Q., Mallick, S., Li, H., Meyer, M., Eichler, E., Stoneking, M., Richards, M., Talamo, S., Shunkov, M., Derevianko, A., Hublin, J., Kelso, J., Slatkin, M., & Pääbo, S. (2010). Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia Nature, 468 (7327), 1053-1060 DOI: 10.1038/nature09710

eFfing Fossil Friday: Frozen Femur

October 24, 2014 / zcofran / 1 Comment

A 45,000 year old human femur from Siberia provides new information about genetic mutation rates and modern human origins. As Quiaomei Fu and colleagues report in this week’s issue of Nature, this seemingly simple leg bone carries so much information, not because of its gross anatomy, but because of the ancient DNA it preserves.

The femur wasn’t discovered by paleontologists, but by an artist/historian looking for fossils around the Irtysh River. The bone came from from a site called Ust’-Ishim, only some 650 km north of the snowy capital where I work in Kazakhstan:

The site in question, Ust’-Ishim is marked by the yellow star. The red and blue sites to the southeast are other Upper Paleolithic sites. Okladnikov (3) and Denisova (4) have also yielded fossils preserving ancient DNA. Modified from Fu et al. figure 1.

The bone was directly radiocarbon dated to around 45,000 years ago. With a fairly precise age of the bone, Fu et al. could estimate the rate at which genetic mutations arise, by counting the number of new mutations in recent humans that aren’t shared by the Ust’-Ishim femur. This led to an estimate of around 0.43×10⁻⁹new mutations per site per year. This is a relatively low rate compared to estimates based on geologically older fossils, but consistent with more recent estimates that directly compare parents and offspring.

The Ust’-Ishim individual had levels of Neandertal ancestry comparable to living Eurasians (~2.3% of the genome), but there is no evidence of any Denisovan ancestry. Because this individual lived closer to the date of modern-Neandertal admixture, the Neandertal segments of its genome are longer than in modern people (recombination over generations breaks these regions apart into shorter segments). Knowing about recombination rates, Fu et al. could infer that admixture between Neandertal and modern human populations occurred between 50-60,000 years ago.

This eFfing Friday fossil provides more tantalizing evidence for DNA-bearing human fossils just across the Kazakhstan border. With Ust’-Ishim to the north, Denisova and Okladnikov caves to the east, and Teshik Tash to the south, my colleagues and I are very keen to find similar sites here on the KZ side.

Reference: Fu et al. 2014. Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from Siberia. Nature 514: 445–449. doi:10.1038/nature13810.

Dawn of Paleoepigenomics

April 18, 2014April 18, 2014 / zcofran / 1 Comment

It was only a matter of time. In the 1990s scientists started extracting, sequencing and analyzing mitochondrial DNA from Neandertal fossils. In the 2000s they made major advances in obtaining and analyzing ancient nuclear DNA, which is much trickier than mtDNA. In just the past year, paleogeneticists pushed the envelope in sequencing truly ancient DNA, announcing hominin and horse genomes from 400 and 700 thousand years ago, respectively. As I mentioned a few months ago, the burgeoning field of paleogenomics is revealing things about human evolution that could hardly be dreamt of only a few decades ago.

But world of DNA is so much more than just ceaseless sequences of four letters, and the field of ‘epigenetics’ has emerged to investigate the complex way that chemical alterations to DNA structure (not sequence) affect gene expression. Melding epigenetics & paleogenomics, David Gokhmen and colleagues report in Science, “Reconstructing the DNA methylation maps of the Neandertal and the Denisovan.” For a review of what DNA methylation is and does, check out this Scitable overview. In short, DNA methylation is part of the reason why not all of your genes in your genome are expressed at all times throughout your body, even though all of your genes are physically present in all of the cells of your body. Methylation plays an important role in turning genes on or off during development. It’s nuts. Now, the structure of DNA breaks down over time after an animal dies, obscuring original methylation patterns. But the decompositoin process is becoming better understood, including patterns at methylated vs. unmethylated sites. As Gokhmen et al. write, these patterns “may serve as a proxy for the levels of methylation in ancient DNA.”

This brilliant insight allowed Gokhmen and colleagues to identify some 2000 genomic regions in bone cells that differed in methylation between a living human, a Neandertal and a Denisovan (2000 less than 1% of all regions). One such region was the HOXD cluster, which is known to be involved in embryonic limb development. Neandertals and Denisovans were more methylated than humans at the HOXD9 and HOXD10 loci. Whether and how these epigenetic differences might be responsible for anatomical differences between these populations is not at all clear yet. But Neandertals are known to differ from humans in some aspects of arm and leg anatomy – authors point out that Neandertals generally have larger and more robust joints but shorter limbs. They state, “together, these findings suggest that the HOXD cluster might have played a key role in the recent evolution of human limbs.”

Importantly, “Denisovans” are only known from 2 teeth and part of a finger bone, no other limb fossils are known (or at least published) for this ancient population. This leads us to a prediction – if the similarly hypermethylated HOXD sites in Denisova and Neandertals are functionally important, then Denisovan limb fossils, if ever found, should be more like Neandertals than like humans. If this prediction is borne out, this would provide evidence of specifically how HOXD9-10 affect limb development, and how HOXD epigenetic regulation has changed in human evolution. This hypothesis can be tested, but only with the discovery of the right fossils (i.e., genetically attributable to Denisovans). Well, the functional importance of hyper/hypomethylation at these sites could probably also be assessed with transgenic mouse experiments…

There is truly remarkable work being done in paleogenomics – and now paleoepigenomics – which will probably begin to form the basis of some exciting new human evo-devo research.

Kryptonians’ DNA in the Sts 71 fossil

April 15, 2014January 5, 2016 / zcofran / 1 Comment

I don’t love flying. In fact I’m writing this post in a traffic jam on the tarmac of Frankfurt International between a 9 hour and a 5 hour flight. On a related note, reclining your seatback all the way for most of a long flight does in fact make you the worst person on earth.

Hey, guy, how’s that 10th X-Men movie? What kind of shampoo is that I smell? Why yes, I do work best when I can’t open my computer fully. What a joyous way for us to learn all about each other, new best friend!

A plus of all this airtime, though, is that I can get caught up on recent movies I’ve missed living under the proverbial rock of research and teaching. On the ~7500 mile trip from Kazakhstan to Kanada I got to watch Man of Steel, a new take on an ancient comic. It was tacky and entertaining and there are some interesting takes on biology, but it had a boss paleo surprise.

The best part of the movie is at the beginning when The Gladiator steals a mysterious “codex” as his planet Krypton plunges catastrophically into implosive oblivion. Amid the chaos, Russel Crowe swims through some chamber, and what does he encounter?

The codex? No, it’s…

Sts seventy f*ing one

Sts 71 is my favorite fossil I’ve seen because it looks totally badass (not a scientific reason, but it’s the truth). It comes from Sterkfontein cave in South Africa, dates to probably around 2.5 million years ago, and is attributed to the species Australopithecus africanus.

I realize I’m behind the times here, but in case you haven’t seen the movie but are planning to, then read no further (SPOILER ALERT). In the film, this codex/fossil apparently contains the genetic code for the entire species of Kryptonians (whose resemblance to living humans is so remarkable it requires a statistically impossible amount of parallel evolution). Now, the oldest DNA recovered from a fossil is from a horse that lived about 700 thousand years ago (Orlando et al., 2013). Sts 71 is some 3-4 times older than that, and illusorily contains the genomes of a billion human-like aliens with super powers.

What a badass fossil.

Paleogenomics is crushing it right now

February 14, 2014 / zcofran / 2 Comments

It’s only Valentine’s Day, and already early 2014/late 2013 have provided several fascinating, high profile studies of ancient DNA (all been published in Nature). Forecasting this deluge, last year closed with the announcement of sequenced mtDNA from a ≥400,000 year old human fossil from Sima de los Huesos, Spain (Meyer et al., 2013). This is the oldest DNA obtained for any human fossil, and among the oldest of any animal.

Shortly thereafter, Prüfer and pals (2014) published the complete genome of a Neandertal from the infamous Denisova cave. This study revealed extensive inbreeding in Siberian Neandertals; the fossil individual’s high level of homozygosity is consistent with their parents being half-siblings. Furthermore, comparison of the genome of this inbred Neandertal with modern humans’ allowed researchers to identify many mutations that have become fixed (shared by all people) by natural selection since the divergence of our and Neandertals’ ancestors. Uncovering these human-specific variants can help us understand the genetic bases for many of humans’ remarkable traits.

In January, Olalde y coautores published a genomic analysis of a 7,000 hunter-gatherer from Spain. This ancient genome contained ancestral variants for genes relating to skin pigmentation (SLC45A2, SLC45A5, MC1R, TYR, and KILTG), meaning this Mesolithic European most probably had dark skin. This individual also had a derived variant of the HERC-OCA2 locus, associated with blue eye color in present day people. This suggests that the relatively novel phenotype of non-brown eyes may have increased in frequency more quickly than light skin color in ancient Europe. This guy also had many derived loci associated with immune function, indicating that the rise of agriculture is not solely responsible for the evolution of immune function in present day Europeans.

Around the same time, Sankararamen and team published an analysis of the distribution of Neandertal genes in living people. Whereas previous studies had already shown that Neandertals contributed ≤4% on average to the genomes of living people, this study examined where in modern people’s genomes this Neandertal ancestry tends to be located. One of the most interesting findings is that Neandertal genes are not uniformly or randomly distributed across the modern human genome. Rather, some regions appear to be especially devoid of Neandertal ancestry, implying natural selection acted strongly against Neandertal genes. These Neander-nude areas are preferentially found on the the X chromosome and in genes expressed in the testes, a finding consistent with reduced fertility in hybrid males. Although the genetic contribution of Neandertals to modern humans means that the two belonged to the same species, Sankararaman et al’s findings suggest the two groups were on their way to becoming different species.

Finally, this past week Rasmussen and rascals have published an analysis of a 12,000 year old human from the Anzick site in Montana, associated with the Clovis stone tool culture. I don’t know much about this time period save for what I learned in a class on North American archaeology taught by Dr. John Speth, back when I was a young, bright-eyed graduate student. One thing I recall from this class, when we were going over Clovis, was that this tool industry was found all over the United States at the beginning of the Holocene, but I was always disappointed by the dearth of bones complementing the copious lithics. Turns out, the DNA analyzed by Rasmussen et al. comes from the only known burial from this time period. This lone burial provides compelling genetic evidence that indigenous Americans have descended largely from a single ancestral population that separated into the North and South American populations prior to the Clovis period. This ancestral population was definitely not from Europe, as a minority of researchers have argued. Check out the SEAC Underground blog for more on the archaeology and ethics of the Anzick analyses.

So, paleogenomics is really crushing it right now. There have been many of recent advances in sampling and sequencing poorly-preserved ancient DNA, and as we’re seeing now, lots of ancient bones (and teeth) are bringing awesome new, genetic insights into recent human evolution. If this is how well we’re doing so early in 2014, you can bet that the rest of the year promises many more exciting discoveries.

This human DNA is old as hell

December 5, 2013February 14, 2014 / zcofran / 6 Comments

If hell were around 400,000 years old. The people who salvaged ancient DNA from fossil Neandertals and “Denisovans” now present mitchondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a human-ish fossils from the Spanish site of Sima de los Huesos (SH; this translates as “pit of bones,” by the way, which is pretty badass). DNA-bearing Neandertal sites and Denisova cave date anywhere from around 30-100 kya, while Sima de los Huesos has been dated by various methods to 300-600 thousand years ago. So the newly announced mtDNA is the oldest human DNA ever recovered…

YET!

Now, we know what Neandertals look like, since they are perhaps the best known group of fossil humans. We don’t really know what Denisovans look like, as their unique DNA came from fossils that are anatomically ambiguous (a large molar and the end of a tiny fragment of the bone at the end of your pinky finger) – they could look like anyone. Even you! The SH fossils predate Neandertals by a few hundred thousand years, but their skulls look pretty similar; quite possibly the SH populations were ancestors of Neandertals, and you’d expect the DNA to be similar in the two groups.

So researchers were surprised to find this SH mtDNA to be more similar to Denisovan than to human or Neandertal mtDNAs. But this actually shouldn’t be that surprising, since we saw the same twist when Denisovan mt and nuclear DNA was sequenced – mtDNA first made it look like humans and Neandertals were more closely related, and the ancestors of Denisovans separated from the human+Neandertal lineage in the deep past. However, mtDNA essentially acts as a single genetic locus – a gene tree isn’t necessarily a species tree – and the more informative nuclear DNA later showed Neandertals and Denisovans to be more closely related to one another than either was to living humans (yet each of these ancient populations contributed some genes to some living people today). Denisovans held on to a very ancient mtDNA lineage, and apparently so did the people represented at Sima de los Huesos. And let’s not forget, we don’t know what Denisovans looked like – maybe they looked just like the older SH fossils.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get human nuclear DNA from Sima de los Huesos. When we do, I predict we’ll see the same kind of twist as with the Denisova DNA, with SH being more similar to Neandertals. But if I’m wrong, maybe we’ll be a step closer to knowing what the bones of the the mysterious “Denisovans” looked like…

Here’s that paper: Meyer et al. in press. A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature12788

Ancient DNA & admixture: One of Science’s breakthrough in 2011

December 23, 2011 / zcofran / 2 Comments

The high-profile journal Science has compiled a list of the top breakthroughs of 2011, some of the most major discoveries and and advances across scientific fields. The top breakthrough was research finding that antiretroviral drugs can act not only to treat patients infected with HIV, but also these antiretrovirals significantly reduce the likelihood of transmission of the disease. This is a pretty effing big deal, as HIVand AIDS are tragically rampant in many parts of the world.

One of the runners-up to this breakthrough: “Archaic Humans’ DNA lives on.” The brief exposé highlights the studies from this year that corroborated the 2010 evidence for Neandertal and “Denisovan” DNA in living people. The exposé concludes with a short and rather out-of-the-blue paragraph about the Australopithecus sediba fossils from Malapa. How about that – anthropological research as a major scientific breakthrough; FL governor Rick Scott certainly didn’t see that one coming.

See for yourself:
Anonymous (2011). The Runners-Up Science, 334 (6063), 1629-1635 DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6063.1629

Leopard horse: Fossils, phenotypes and genotypes

November 8, 2011August 4, 2013 / zcofran / Leave a comment

I wish I were talking about some beastly horse-big-cat hybrid, or at least a carnivorous horse. Instead… a ton of anthropology-related papers came out today in PNAS, and possibly the coolest one is a study that compares the DNA of Pleistocene fossil and modern horses with different coat colors/patterns, and then ties this in with Paleolithic cave art. A crazy confluence of four-field anthropology right there.

Modern horses and their depictions in Late Pleistocene French caves (Pruvost et al. 2011)

Melanie Pruvost and colleagues (in press) noted that the depiction of spotted horses at the site of Pech-Merle (they give 24 kya) could mean one of two things: (1) either the early human painters were depicting horses they actually saw on the landscape at the time, or (2) they were just being fanciful and frivolous, creative and carefree with their cavern canvas. Now, some modern horse breeds have a similar spotted, “leopard” phenotype, and a genetic basis for this is understood. So Pruvost and pals examined DNA from fossil horse bones from European sites dating to 20 – 2 kya to see if these mottled mares roamed the lands of the cave-painters. Sure enough, several samples show evidence for the mutation causing leopard spots.

This is pretty cool for evolutionary biology and paleontology. A major question in biology is how an individual’s genes (genotype) relate to overall appearance/behavior (phenotype). To a certain extent, physical variation between organisms arises from genetic variation, so when we see things evolve through the fossil record, this ought to correspond with some genetic changes as well. But linking genes to appearances isn’t so easy (especially for extinct animals). Pruvost and colleagues’ study is a step in this direction, though. Plus, the recent sequencing of the fossil Neandertal (Green et al. 2010) and Denisovan (Reich et al. 2010) genomes makes it possible to try to figure out if/how humans’ unique physical traits reflect our genes. In fact, even before these genomes were fully sequenced, Carles Lalueza-Fox and team (2007) identified a mutation on Neandertals’ MC1R gene, strongly suggesting the Neandertals sampled had light skin and red hair.

But the genetic basis for skeletal phenotypes is harder to discern. For example, Green et al. (2010) identified the unique human version of the RUNX2 gene as having come under strong natural selection since the disappearance of Neandertals. The authors noted that because mutations of RUNX2 in humans are associated with a cleidocranial dysplasia affecting the form of the skull and shoulders, and because humans and Neandertals differ in some aspects of their skulls and shoulders, then RUNX2 variation between humans and Neandertals is likely related to visible differences in their skeletons. But that’s about as much as could be said at the moment – RUNX2 is involved in bony development of the entire skeleton, interacting with other various genes in various places during ontogeny. So while it’s tempting, it’s still a little early to link RUNX2, or pretty much any other development-related gene, with physical differences between humans and our fossil relatives. But one day!

A Neandertal’s ruddy locks have never preserved in the fossil record, but its bones are very well known. In an ironic twist, we may have a better understanding of the genetic basis of variation in a soft-tissue (for which there are no fossils), than we do for the skeleton (for which we have lots of fossils).

And maybe one day I’ll get that leopard horse I was hoping for.

References
Green, R., Krause, J., Briggs, A., Maricic, T., Stenzel, U., Kircher, M., Patterson, N., Li, H., Zhai, W., Fritz, M., Hansen, N., Durand, E., Malaspinas, A., Jensen, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Alkan, C., Prufer, K., Meyer, M., Burbano, H., Good, J., Schultz, R., Aximu-Petri, A., Butthof, A., Hober, B., Hoffner, B., Siegemund, M., Weihmann, A., Nusbaum, C., Lander, E., Russ, C., Novod, N., Affourtit, J., Egholm, M., Verna, C., Rudan, P., Brajkovic, D., Kucan, Z., Gusic, I., Doronichev, V., Golovanova, L., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., Fortea, J., Rosas, A., Schmitz, R., Johnson, P., Eichler, E., Falush, D., Birney, E., Mullikin, J., Slatkin, M., Nielsen, R., Kelso, J., Lachmann, M., Reich, D., & Paabo, S. (2010). A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome Science, 328 (5979), 710-722 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021

Pruvost, M., Bellone, R., Benecke, N., Sandoval-Castellanos, E., Cieslak, M., Kuznetsova, T., Morales-Muniz, A., O’Connor, T., Reissmann, M., Hofreiter, M., & Ludwig, A. (2011). Genotypes of predomestic horses match phenotypes painted in Paleolithic works of cave art Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1108982108

01/01/2011: Looking forward and backward, so fast you may barf

January 1, 2011 / zcofran / Leave a comment

2010 was a big year for anthropology and lawn-chair-anthropologists. There was laughter and crying, and maybe also some yelling. And smiling. Let’s take a look back at some of the big events of the past year.

Ancient DNA. What a great year for ancient human DNA! In April, Krause and colleagues (2010) announced the sequencing of mitochondrial DNA from a ~50,000 year old girl from Denisova in Siberia. This sequence was twice as divergent from humans as Neandertal mtDNA, which really shocked a lot of people. Then just a week or so ago Reich and colleagues (2010) announced nuclear DNA from the site. The big news was that these ancient humans contributed genes to modern day Melanesians, but not other modern humans sampled. In May, Green and the Pääbo lab announced a draft sequence of the Neandertal nuclear genome. Like with the Denisova story, Neandertal mtDNA is fairly distinct from that of modern humans, and the nuclear genome revealed contribution to some modern humans but not to others. Basically, ancient DNA came out supporting the multiregional model of modern human origins.
Malapa hominids. Lee Berger and researchers announced a new fossil site, Malapa, in South Africa. This site yielded 2 partial skeletons (and others forthcoming), including a very well-preserved skull of a subadult. Superficially the thing looked to me like Australopithecus africanus, though the authors argue that it shows some features derived toward the condition of early Homo. But at an estimated 1.9-1.7 million years old, it’s a little too young to have anything to do with the origin of Homo – not to mention its small 400 cubic centimeter cranial capacity. I really don’t know what to do with Malapa yet.
Woranso-Mille Australopithecus afarensis. This site dates to around 3.6 million years ago, so it’s roughly contemporaneous with Laetoli afarensis, or intermediate in age between Laetoli and later afarensis sites like Maka and Hadar. Haile-Selassie and colleagues described a partial skeleton from the site. This male includes part of the pelvis, which didn’t get much coverage. But it has a 1st rib, scapula and clavicle, indicating a fairly human-like (rather than ape-like) torso shape. So even for how well we know A. afarensis, we’re always learning more about our ancestor.
Saadanius hijazensis and catarrhines. I didn’t blog about this one at the time as I was getting ready to hit the field. But this was exciting because Iyad Zalmout and friends here at UM discovered and analyzed it. Saadanius was found in ~29 million year old deposits in Saudi Arabia, right around the estimated time of origins of apes. The fossil looks like an Aegyptopithecus to my untrained eye, but apparently may be similar to the last common ancestor of apes and old world monkeys.
Field work. I had my first (of hopefully more!) field season at Dmanisi in Georgia. Paleoanthropology would be nothing without fossils, so an important aspect of the job I’d like to do more of is increasing the fossil record. Dmanisi is an amazing place for this, being among the oldest human sites outside Africa, and the interesting ‘intermediacy’ of the Dmanisi hominids between early Homo and more classic H. erectus. We found some great stuff last year, and I anticipate the site will produce more great fossils in the future. Who knows, maybe more fossiliferous deposits will be found in nearby regions?

So it was a helluva year, 2010. What excitement will 2011 bring? Here are some things I’d like to, or expect to, see this year:

More ancient DNA – the surprise that many researchers got from Denisova and Neandertal ancient DNA clearly warrants more work on other ancient DNA. What does that of other fossil humans look like? Will the picture of human origins become further complicated (that is, different from paradigmatic out-of-Africa replacement)? In this regard we need to analyze DNA from more late Pleistocene fossils regarded as ‘anatomically modern.’
a) More about Malapa. I want to say I heard somewhere that there were more hominids than just the 2 presented in the Science paper. These additional specimens will provide further evidence, including what variation within the site was like, and how it fits with other South African specimens. From the appearance of things, these fossils may be late-persisting A. africanus, somehow contemporaneous (roughly sympatric?) with A. robustus and possibly early Homo. Perhaps more work on the geology and taphonomy of Malapa will show it to be older, contemporaneous with the nearby site of Sterkfontein known for abundant A. africanus fossils? Probably not.

b) More hominid sites and fossils in South Africa. One thing that was neat about Malapa was that it was from slightly outside the rest of the South African ‘cradle’ sites like Sterkfontein, Kromdraai, Drimolen, and Swartkrans. When I was in the area in 2008 I went with some researchers on survey of the Sterkfontein valley, new sites are definitely being sought. Perhaps 2011 will see the discovery of more Malapa-like sites?
Human fossils from East Asia. Maybe even ancient DNA recovery from the region. East Asia has long been thought to be a potential ‘center’ of human origins. Earlier in the year, fossils coming from Zhirendong suggest some of the earliest evidence of chin, arguably a ‘modern human’ feature. Recent fossil and genetic discoveries ought to usher a renewed vigor in examining human evolution in Asia.

That’s all I feel like doing for now. Happy New Year, all!

References

Berger, L., de Ruiter, D., Churchill, S., Schmid, P., Carlson, K., Dirks, P., & Kibii, J. (2010). Australopithecus sediba: A New Species of Homo-Like Australopith from South Africa Science, 328 (5975), 195-204 DOI: 10.1126/science.1184944

Cann, R., Stoneking, M., & Wilson, A. (1987). Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution Nature, 325 (6099), 31-36 DOI: 10.1038/325031a0

Green, R., Krause, J., Briggs, A., Maricic, T., Stenzel, U., Kircher, M., Patterson, N., Li, H., Zhai, W., Fritz, M., Hansen, N., Durand, E., Malaspinas, A., Jensen, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Alkan, C., Prufer, K., Meyer, M., Burbano, H., Good, J., Schultz, R., Aximu-Petri, A., Butthof, A., Hober, B., Hoffner, B., Siegemund, M., Weihmann, A., Nusbaum, C., Lander, E., Russ, C., Novod, N., Affourtit, J., Egholm, M., Verna, C., Rudan, P., Brajkovic, D., Kucan, Z., Gusic, I., Doronichev, V., Golovanova, L., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., Fortea, J., Rosas, A., Schmitz, R., Johnson, P., Eichler, E., Falush, D., Birney, E., Mullikin, J., Slatkin, M., Nielsen, R., Kelso, J., Lachmann, M., Reich, D., & Paabo, S. (2010). A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome Science, 328 (5979), 710-722 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021

Haile-Selassie, Y., Latimer, B., Alene, M., Deino, A., Gibert, L., Melillo, S., Saylor, B., Scott, G., & Lovejoy, C. (2010). An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (27), 12121-12126 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004527107

Liu W, Jin CZ, Zhang YQ, Cai YJ, Xing S, Wu XJ, Cheng H, Edwards RL, Pan WS, Qin DG, An ZS, Trinkaus E, & Wu XZ (2010). Human remains from Zhirendong, South China, and modern human emergence in East Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107 (45), 19201-6 PMID: 20974952

Reich D, Green RE, Kircher M, Krause J, Patterson N, Durand EY, Viola B, Briggs AW, Stenzel U, Johnson PL, Maricic T, Good JM, Marques-Bonet T, Alkan C, Fu Q, Mallick S, Li H, Meyer M, Eichler EE, Stoneking M, Richards M, Talamo S, Shunkov MV, Derevianko AP, Hublin JJ, Kelso J, Slatkin M, & Pääbo S (2010). Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature, 468 (7327), 1053-60 PMID: 21179161

Zalmout IS, Sanders WJ, Maclatchy LM, Gunnell GF, Al-Mufarreh YA, Ali MA, Nasser AA, Al-Masari AM, Al-Sobhi SA, Nadhra AO, Matari AH, Wilson JA, & Gingerich PD (2010). New Oligocene primate from Saudi Arabia and the divergence of apes and Old World monkeys. Nature, 466 (7304), 360-4 PMID: 20631798

Denisova the Menace II: Nuclear story

December 23, 2010 / zcofran / 1 Comment

Earlier this year, I discussed the publication of a mitochondrial DNA study from a 50,000 year old pinky bone from Denisova in Siberia. The big story there was that the mtDNA of this specimen was twice as divergent (different) from modern humans as Neandertal mtDNA. This suggested to researchers that there was this rogue human group (some [not I] might say ‘species’) running around Eurasia around the time of the Upper Paleolithic.

Well now they’ve sequenced the nuclear genome of one of a Denisova denizen. The picture painted is that a Denisova-Neandertal ‘lineage’ split off from that of modern humans some time in the distant past, then the Denisovans split from Neandertals some time later. Most interesting, modern-day Melanesians seem to derive about 4% of their genes from this ‘archaic’ Denisovan lineage, whereas this archaic genetic baggage isn’t present in other modern human populations.

AMAZING! Think back to the draft of the Neandertal nuclear genome, also published earlier this year. Green and colleagues (2010) reported that the Neandertal nuclear genome revealed that Neandertals contributed up to 4% of the genomes of modern-day non-Africans. Now, the Denisova genome shows that a different and more specific group of modern humans (Melanesians) appears to uniquely share a different set of nuclear genes from an ‘extinct’ human group.

But if they contributed their genes to modern people, are they really extinct? Of course not! I’m admittedly not a geneticist, but I think what we’re seeing here are the genetic signatures of a single, ancient structured population of modern humans. That is to say, all modern humans derive different amounts of their genes from various ancient subpopulations of ‘archaic’ humans (for ‘archaic,’ think ‘people that lived a long time ago’). There was just little enough contact between these populations for them to have diverged slightly from one another, but still enough contact for them all to have contributed different parts and amounts of genes to people today.

It is weird, then, to see the ancient DNA geneticist Svante Pääbo (out of whose lab this ancient genetic work is done) say this to BBC News:

“It is fascinating to see direct evidence that these archaic species did exist (alongside us) and it’s only for the last few tens of thousands of years that is unique in our history that we are alone on this planet and we have no close relatives with us anymore.”

Why are these ‘archaic species…alongside us”? The fact that these groups were mixing means that they are a single species – the ability (and propensity) to interbreed is the standard definition of ‘species’ used in modern biology.

So contrary to Pääbo’s quote, I’d say we do have close relatives with us, it’s just that modern humans are much more closely to one another related than ancient human populations were to one another. Probably there is more contact between modern human populations, beginning a few tens of thousands of years ago, because population sizes explode to the some 7 billion people we have on earth today. This greater contact means less chance for populations to diverge from one another.

The take-home: We all have multiple ancestors, from various times and places. For more comprehensive and better-informed coverage, check out John Hawks’s post on the topic.