Denisovans: The Girl With a Neanderthal Mother and a Denisovan Father

Her mother was a Neanderthal and her father was one of the Denisovans, and a bone shorter than a paperclip is how we know. Meet Denisova 11, nicknamed "Denny": as far as we know, the first child of such a pair that anyone has ever identified. In this episode of Hominid Notes: researchers picked one scrap of human bone out of 2,315 fragments with a protein fingerprint, read its mitochondrial DNA (Neanderthal: her mother's line), then the DNA in the cell nucleus, which showed a mix of two groups. We meet the Denisovans themselves, first known from a finger bone and its DNA, and look at her parents' family trees. Was she a Neanderthal Denisovan hybrid? The scientific paper uses the plainer word "offspring". Does one girl prove that mixing between these two groups was common? The authors lean towards "frequent", with caveats, and we show where the evidence stops. We do not know when exactly she lived, how she lived or died, what she looked like, or where her parents met. A note on the pictures: nobody knows what the Denisovans looked like, so in this video the Denisovans, and the girl's parents, appear only as faceless silhouettes, never as reconstructions. One question for you: if one more bone like hers turned up tomorrow, what would you most want it to tell us? What she looked like, how she lived, how her parents met, or where her father's people came from? Tell us in the comments. 0:00 The Girl From a Tiny Bone 0:42 Hidden in 2,315 Fragments 2:42 An Impossible Result 5:45 Meet the Denisovans 8:28 Her Parents' Family Trees 11:09 Does One Girl Mean "Common"? 13:12 What We Still Don't Know 14:13 Your Question Sources (also shown on screen): Slon V. et al. (2018). The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Nature 561:113-116. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Brown S. et al. (2016). Identification of a new hominin bone from Denisova Cave, Siberia using collagen fingerprinting and mitochondrial DNA analysis. Scientific Reports 6:23559. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Douka K. et al. (2019). Age estimates for hominin fossils and the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic at Denisova Cave. Nature 565:640-644. https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... Chen F. et al. (2019). A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature 569:409-412. https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... Prüfer K. et al. (2014). The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains. Nature. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Meyer M. et al. (2012). A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science 338:222-226. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Reich D. et al. (2010). Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature 468:1053-1060. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Max Planck Institute press release, 22 Aug 2018, "Neandertal mother, Denisovan father!": https://www.mpg.de/12208106/ Max Planck Society, 20 Dec 2018, "Viviane Slon among Nature's annual Top Ten": https://www.mpg.de/12606776/viviane-s... Max Planck Institute press release, 24 Mar 2010 (on Krause et al. 2010, Nature), "New form of human discovered": https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/cont... Max Planck Institute press release, 23 Dec 2010, on the Denisova genome: https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/cont... Photo credits (photos from Wikimedia Commons; cropped or zoomed; licences: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... , https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... , https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Photo: Cheburgenator / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Xenochka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Демин Алексей Барнаул (Aleksey Demin) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Александр Байдуков (Aleksandr Baydukov) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Thilo Parg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 — replica of the Denisova 3 finger bone Photo: Dongju Zhang / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Thilo Parg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 — replica of a Denisovan molar Photo: Pavel Kazachkov / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 — Altai Mountains (general view) Subscribe for new deep dives into human origins every week:    / @hominidnotes   This video uses an AI-generated voice and AI-generated illustrations. #denisovans #neanderthals #ancientdna