🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE Researchers find evidence that a group of still-unknown humans interbred with our ancestors.
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The story is a bit more tangled than the timeline suggests, as genetic analysis of fossils of these extinct lineages has revealed they once interbred with modern humans, unions that may have endowed our lineage with The researchers detected statistical anomalies they suggested were best explained by interbreeding between West Africans and an unknown ancient human lineage whose ancestors diverged from those of modern humans before the split between Neanderthals and modern humans. Four West African groups — Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria, Esan in southern Nigeria, Gambians in western Gambia, and Mende in Sierra Leone — may derive 2% to 19% of their DNA from a ghost lineage, the researchers said.
Previous research also hinted at interbreeding with ghost lineages in Africa, such as a 2011 study examining sub-Saharan Africa and. The ghost lineage examined in the January study "is likely the ghost lineage we are seeing," Sankararaman said. "A broader question of the number of these ghost lineages that have survived into present-day Africans is fascinating, which we don't have the answers to.
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