Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Human evolution

Stranger from Siberia

Nature volume 464, pages 838–839 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

The sequencing of ancient DNA is generating dramatic results. The sequence from a bone fragment has revealed the existence of an unknown type of extinct human ancestor that lived in Asia 40,000 years ago.

Forty thousand years ago, the planet was more crowded than we thought. For decades we believed that there were just two members of the genus Homo living at that time. First, Neanderthals, which occupied large tracts of Europe and north Asia, although their days were numbered and within 15,000 years they became extinct. Second, early modern humans, members of our own species, who spread across Eurasia from the African homelands that they had left some 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier. This picture changed in 2003 when a third human species, the tiny 'Hobbit', Homo floresiensis, was discovered in Indonesia, the most recent of these fossils being only 13,000 years old.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Occupation site.

J. KRAUSE

Figure 2: Evolutionary relationships between modern humans, Neanderthals and the unknown Denisova hominin.

References

  1. Krause, J. et al. Nature 464, 894–897 (2010). | Article |

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Miller, W. et al. Nature 456, 387–390 (2008).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Briggs, A. W. et al. Science 325, 318–321 (2009).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Rasmussen, M. et al. Nature 463, 757–762 (2010).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Terence A. Brown is in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester,Manchester M17DN, UK. terry.brown@manchester.ac.uk ,

    Terence A. Brown

Authors
  1. Terence A. Brown
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Brown, T. Stranger from Siberia. Nature 464, 838–839 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464838a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/464838a

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing