Very ancient ghosts in the African genome
The above figure is from a preprint (updated from last year), Recovering signals of ghost archaic introgression in African populations. But to truly get a sense of this preprint, I would highly recommend you read the supplementary material. And, to be honest, a publication from 2007, The Joint Allele-Frequency Spectrum in Closely Related Species, as […]
The divisibility of human ancestry
The class human or H. sapiens refers to a set of individuals. On the grand scale it’s really not all that clear and distinct. When do “archaic” humans become “modern” humans? Taking into account human variation, what is a …
Neanderthal-human mating, months later….
Image credit:ICHTO
Recently something popped up into my Google news feed in regards to “Neanderthal-human mating.” If you are a regular reader you know that I’m wild for this particular combination of the “wild thing.” Bu…
Massive Neandertal & Denisovan introgression
Update: John Hawks’ lab is working in the same area, and he disagrees with the specific results presented here. Always reminds you to be careful about sexy results presented at conference! (someone should do a study!)
So claimed Peter Parham at a…
Neandertal admixture, revisiting results after shaken priors
After 2010′s world-shaking revolutions in our understanding of modern human origins, the admixture of Eurasian hominins with neo-Africans, I assumed there was going to be a revisionist look at results which seemed to point to mixing between diffe…
Hybridization is like sex
One of the major issues which has loomed at the heart of biology since The Origin of Species is why species exist, as well as how species come about. Why isn’t there a perfect replicator which performs all the conversion of energy and matter into biomass on this planet? If there is a God the tree […]