90,000-year-old human hybrid found in ancient cave
Researchers have just discovered the remains of a hybrid human.
![]()
90,000 years ago, a young girl lived in a cave in the Altai mountains in southern Siberia. Her life was short; she died in her early teens, but she stands at a unique point in human evolution. She is the first known hybrid of two different kinds of ancient humans: the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.
Her remains were discovered by a team of researchers this past summer. In a study published in Nature, the details of the discovery and the implications it has on our understanding of human evolution are explained.
A hybrid who and what?
We Homo sapiens aren’t the only species of human to have walked the earth, and only recently have we lacked the company of our evolutionary siblings, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. While the former is rather famous the later is nearly unknown.
This might be because we only discovered the Denisovans in 2010 and have so few fossils to work with that we don’t even know what they looked like. We’re not quite sure when they faded away, but it is probable that they vanished around the same time the Neanderthals did, 40,000 years ago.
What do we know about this girl?
Denisova 11, the rather dull name the researchers have given the hybrid human, is the fifth Denisovan ever found, which makes the fact she was a hybrid all the more fascinating. A small bone fragment is all we have of her, or the other members of her species for that matter. We know she had parents of two different species and lived in a cave with several members of both species.
Related Topics
Trending News & Articles
More in