Spanish Cave Hominins Were Proto-Neandertals

[Steviepinhead]

Hat tip to dienekes, who blogs the new research in Nature. He also has the linky.

Another pop-sci article:

Previous analyses of the hominins from Sima de los Huesos in 2013 showed that their maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA was distantly related to Denisovans, extinct relatives of Neanderthals in Asia. This was unexpected since their skeletal remains carry Neanderthal-derived features. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have since worked on sequencing nuclear DNA from fossils from the cave, a challenging task as the extremely old DNA is degraded to very short fragments. The results now show that the Sima de los Huesos hominins were indeed early Neanderthals. Neanderthals may have acquired different mitochondrial genomes later, perhaps as the result of gene flow from Africa.

Until now it has been unclear how the 28 400,000-year-old individuals found at the Sima de los Huesos ("pit of bones") site in Northern Spain were related to Neanderthals and Denisovans who lived until about 40,000 years ago. A previous report based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA from one of the specimens suggested a distant relationship to Denisovans, which is in contrast to other archaeological evidence, including morphological features that the Sima de los Huesos hominins shared with Neanderthals.

[Sugriva]

Molecules to man!

[osmanthus]

New Scientist had a bit of a write up of this the other day: https://www.newscientist.com/article...human-history/

Another puzzle remains. The study confirmed a previous finding that the mitochondrial DNA of the Sima hominin is more similar to Denisovans than to Neanderthals – but no one knows why.

Perhaps there was another unidentified lineage of hominins in Eurasia that interbred with the ancestors of both – but not with the particular group of hominins that evolved into the Neanderthals.

Or, Meyer says, perhaps such mitochondrial DNA was typical of early Neanderthals and Denisovans, and it was only later that Neanderthals acquired different mitochondrial DNA from an African population of “proto-Homo sapiens“.

[Steviepinhead]

eurologist, who is one of the commenters on Dienekes' blog, has this to say:

Firstly, the majority of mainland European archaeologists would consider these specimens heidelbergensis, as has been done so for over half a century in the time from ~600,000 to ~350,000 ya (with some transition period from modern European erectus before then, and towards Neanderthal after that), and rightfully so as confirmed by later, detailed measurements and PC analyses.

Secondly, I had alredy pointed out with the previous mtDNA study, that this indicates heidelbergensis spread east early on (and later, ~200,000 ya, likely all the way to China), while the group remaining in Europe admixed with one from NE Africa via the African/Levant W Asian/ SE European triangle connection, and thus Neanderthals have a more "modern," i.e. more African mtDNA, while at the same time subsequent climatic isolation led to their peculiar accumulation of features (e.g., cold adaptations)..

I don't know how plausible any of this is. It's hard to actually find any European fossils that are identified as H. erectus, for example. And I'm unfamiliar with the morphmetric work that is referenced (the "detailed measurements and PCA analyses")...