NEANDERTHALS – SCI & TECH
News: Explained
| Are Neanderthals to blame for the long and short of the human nose?
What's in the news?
● A
recent study – published in Communications Biology, led by researchers from the
University College London and Fudan University and with contributions from
researchers across the world – used 2D images and measures of the distance
between facial landmarks, computed in an automated fashion, in over 6,000 Latin
American individuals as the basis for a genetic association study.
Key takeaways:
● Prehistoric humans and
Neanderthals are believed to have interbred, exchanging genetic material and
contributing to the genomes of present-day humans, thus shaping human destiny
to this day.
● This
is also known as the introgression of
genomic sequences.
● Researchers
have estimated that this interbreeding occurred approximately 70,000-1,00,000 years ago, leaving
a lasting genetic legacy in the human population.
Svante Pääbo's efforts:
● The
evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo made significant
contributions to the study of Neanderthal genomes and the transfer of genetic
information (introgression) between the archaic, long-extinct hominids, the
Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and modern-day humans.
○ Denisovans
are a subspecies of archaic humans who lived until around 30,000 years ago.
○ Neanderthal,
modern human’s cousin species that went extinct about 30,000 years ago.
● Dr.
Pääbo’s efforts to understand archaic
hominid interbreeding have earned him recognition in the scientific
community, and won him the prestigious
Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2022.
● He
has provided key insights into the evolutionary
history of our species and the genetic contributions we have inherited from
our ancient relatives.