Study Shows 28,000 Year-Old Europeans' DNA Was Like Ours

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Study Shows 28,000 Year-Old Europeans' DNA Was Like Ours

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/115152.php

40,000 years ago, the Cro-Magnoid people - the first people who had a

skeleton that looked anatomically modern - entered Europe, coming

from Africa. In the July 16 issue of the open-access journal PLoS

ONE, a group of geneticists, coordinated by Guido Barbujani and

Caramelli of the Universities of Ferrara and Florence, shows that a

Cro-Magnoid individual who lived in Southern Italy 28,000 years ago

was a modern European, genetically as well as anatomically.

The Cro-Magnoid people long coexisted in Europe with other humans,

the Neandertals, whose anatomy and DNA were clearly different from

ours. However, obtaining a reliable sequence of Cro-Magnoid DNA was

technically challenging.

" The risk in the study of ancient individuals is to attribute to the

fossil specimen the DNA left there by archaeologists or biologists

who manipulated it " , Barbujani says. " To avoid that, we followed all

phases of the retrieval of the fossil bones and typed the DNA

sequences of all people who had any contacts with them. "

The results demonstrate for the first time that the anatomical

differences between Neandertals and Cro-Magnoids were associated with

clear genetic differences. The Neandertal people, who lived in Europe

for nearly 300,000 years, are not the ancestors of modern Europeans.

A 28,000 Years Old Cro-Magnon mtDNA Sequence Differs from All

Potentially Contaminating Modern Sequences.

Caramelli D, Milani L, Vai S, Modi A, Pecchioli E, et al. (2008)

PLoS ONE 3(7): e2700. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002700