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madrobinsIf you're interested in anthropology, here's a Christmas present: a bone discovered two years ago at a dig in Russia has been identified as belonging to a 6- or 7-year old girl who died 30,000 years ago. A whole new group of hominids they're calling "Denisovans." But this is the really cool part:
Well I think it's neat, anyway.
The 3 billion-letter nuclear genome derived from the child's finger shows that the ice-age population of early humans was more diverse than previously thought. Also, a comparison of the genome to modern humans indicates that Melanesian inhabitants of Papua New Guinea and various South Pacific islands inherited as much as 5 percent of their DNA from Denisovans.
Well I think it's neat, anyway.