Study identifies two unknown hominin ancestors in human DNA
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University reported that modern humans carry genetic material from two previously unknown hominin lineages. One lineage, termed a “ghost ancestor,” interbred with modern humans in Africa more than 50,000 years ago, contributing roughly 0.5 %–1 % of each individual’s genome—about the same proportion as Neanderthal DNA. The second lineage, called a “super‑archaic ancestor,” diverged from the human lineage about 1.8 million years ago, mixed with Denisovans in Eurasia, and later entered modern human genomes through Denisovan interbreeding.
The team developed a new computational approach called TRACE (TRacking Archaic Contributions via ARG Estimation) to detect these ancient DNA segments in the genomes of about 500 contemporary individuals. TRACE successfully identified known Neanderthal and Denisovan regions before revealing the previously hidden ghost and super‑archaic contributions, which are present in all modern human populations worldwide.
Entities: Arjun Biddanda · Johns Hopkins University · Priya Moorjani · TRACE (Tracking Archaic Contributions via ARG Estimation) · TRACE computational method · University of California, Berkeley · Yulin Zhang
Claims
What the coverage asserts, and how well corroborated each claim is across sources.
- [● 5 SOURCES] One lineage, called a ghost ancestor, interbred with modern humans in Africa before 50,000 years ago. (Yulin Zhang, UC Berkeley)
- [● 5 SOURCES] Ghost ancestry accounts for about 1 % of the modern human genome, comparable to Neanderthal DNA. (Study authors)
- [● 4 SOURCES] The super‑archaic lineage split from the modern human lineage about 1.8 million years ago and interbred with Denisovans in Eurasia. (Study authors)
- [● 4 SOURCES] The study introduced a new computational method called TRACE to detect ancient DNA contributions using modern genomes. (Researchers)
- [● 4 SOURCES] Denisovans later transferred some super‑archaic DNA to modern humans through interbreeding. (Study authors)
- [● 7 SOURCES] Researchers identified DNA from two unknown hominin lineages in modern human genomes. (Study authors)
- [● 5 SOURCES] Both African and non‑African populations carry similar amounts of ghost ancestry, roughly 0.5‑1 % per individual. (Study authors)
- [● 4 SOURCES] Overall, about 2 % of the modern human genome is archaic DNA, half from Neanderthals and the rest from other sources. (Study authors)