An Archaic Perspective on Human Origins

How can we use genomics to fill out the picture of human evolution sketched by the fossil record? Over the past 25 years, Pääbo’s laboratory developed techniques for extracting and analyzing DNA from Pleistocene fossil remains. He has used those techniques to reconstruct the genomes of Neanderthals, who lived in western Eurasia until becoming extinct around 30,000 years ago, and to analyze a newly identified human ancestor he calls Denisovans. He has discovered evidence of interbreeding between humans and both Neanderthals and Denisovans, shaking up long-held notions about how our human ancestors interacted with other hominins once they left Africa.