This is what mysterious ancient humans might have looked like
We know that mysterious ancient humans called Denisovans once lived alongside Neanderthals, thanks to a few bones and teeth recovered from a cave in Siberia. Now, for the first time, researchers have shared what they might have looked like.
The previously recovered bone fragments include a pinky bone, teeth and a jawbone. Denisovans also left a genetic legacy that lives on today in the DNA of some Asians, Australians and Melanesians. A Denisovan genome was sequenced in 2012 and compared with that of modern humans, revealing the trait.
Denisovans not only interbred with Neanderthals, but with archaic Eurasian humans as well. Because their DNA lives on in some humans today, researchers have reason to believe that they once lived all throughout Asia. Yet, the fossil record is incredibly sparse.
Scientists may have been able to sequence their genome, but this small fossil record made it difficult to piece together their appearance -- until now.
In order to piece this puzzle together, researchers had to go a different route than normal reconstruction: DNA methylation data.
This process relies on extracting information from gene activity patterns, rather than DNA sequences. These patterns are chemical modifications that don't change the actual DNA sequence.
From these patterns, the researchers were able to predict Denisovan features. They began by comparing patterns between different human ancestor groups to find areas where they differed. They further analyzed the differences to determine how those might influence anatomical features. The researchers used current research on what we've learned about the different ways genes function to match those differences.
The study published Thursday in the journal Cell Press.
"We provide the first reconstruction of the skeletal anatomy of Denisovans," said Liran Carmel, study author at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "In many ways, Denisovans resembled Neanderthals, but in some traits, they resembled us, and in others they were unique."
The researchers tested their method on Neanderthals and chimpanzees since their anatomies are both understood. Their method was 85% accurate in predicting how their traits differed and why, resulting in reconstruction.
"By doing so, we can get a prediction as to what skeletal parts are affected by differential regulation of each gene and in what direction that skeletal part would change -- for example, a longer or shorter femur," said David Gokhman, study author and postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.
When they applied this method to Denisovans, they found that 56 features were different from Neanderthals and modern humans. And 34 of those were in the skull alone, including a longer dental arch and a wider skull. ...
