Ancient DNA reveals new branches of the Denisovan family tree

It's widely accepted that anatomically modern humans interbred with their close relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, as they dispersed out of Africa. But a study examining DNA fragments passed down from these ancient hominins to modern people living in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea now suggests that the ancestry of Papuans includes not just one but two distinct Denisovan lineages, which had been separated from each other for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, the researchers suggest, one of those Denisovan lineages is so different from the other that they really should be considered as an entirely new archaic hominin species.

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