Neanderthal ‘sister species’ interbred with humans
Photo taken on July 8, 2010 of a mannequin of a Tautavel Man presented at the prehistoric museum in Tautavel.
A newly discovered "sister species" to the Neanderthals that once roamed Europe has left behind snippets of DNA in present-day Africans.
And there is only one way that genetic material could have made it into modern human populations, according to The Washington Post.
"Geneticists like euphemisms, but we're talking about sex," said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose lab identified the mysterious DNA in three groups of modern Africans.
The DNA showed up in populations across the continent, both in pygmies of central Africa and in Tanzania's Hadza and Sandawe hunter-gatherers, reported TG Daily. The new discovery doesn't resemble human or Neanderthal DNA, meaning it came from an unknown group.
"Fossils degrade fast in Africa so we don't have a reference genome for this ancestral lineage, but one of the things we're thinking is it could have been a sibling species to Neanderthals," said Akey.
More from GlobalPost: Spanish cave paintings older than previously thought
According to the Post, he also added that the interbreeding with humans probably occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, which was long after some modern humans made their way out of Africa to colonize Asia and Europe, and around the same time Neanderthals were starting to dwindle in Europe.
This isn't the first time a species other than humans and Neanderthals has been found to contribute to the makeup of modern-day humans. TG Daily reported that in 2010, DNA analysis showed that a species known as Denisovans gave as much as 6 percent of the genome of present-day New Guineans.
The story you just read is accessible and free to all because thousands of listeners and readers contribute to our nonprofit newsroom. We go deep to bring you the human-centered international reporting that you know you can trust. To do this work and to do it well, we rely on the support of our listeners. If you appreciated our coverage this year, if there was a story that made you pause or a song that moved you, would you consider making a gift to sustain our work through 2024 and beyond?