Saga of Early Humans Etched in DNA of Mixed-species Child

AFP - Denny was an inter-species love child.

Her mother was a Neanderthal, but her father was Denisovan, a distinct species of primitive human that also roamed the Eurasian continent 50,000 years ago, scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Nicknamed by Oxford University scientists, Denisova 11 -- her official name -- was at least 13 when she died, for reasons unknown.

"There was earlier evidence of interbreeding between different hominin, or early human, groups," said lead author Vivian Slon, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

"But this is the first time that we have found a direct, first-generation offspring," she told AFP.

Denny's surprising pedigree was unlocked from a bone fragment unearthed in 2012 by Russian archeologists at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.

Analysis of the bone's DNA left no doubt: the chromosomes were a 50-50 mix of Neanderthal and Denisovan, two distinct species of early humans that split apart between 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.

"I initially thought that they must have screwed up in the lab," said senior author and Max Planck Institute professor Svante Paabo, who identified the first Denisovan a decade ago at the same site.

Worldwide, fewer than two dozen early human genomes from before 40,000 years ago -- Neanderthal, Denisovan, Homo sapiens -- have been sequenced, and the chances of stumbling on a half-and-half hybrid seemed vanishingly small.

Or not.

- Inter-species hanky-panky -

"The very fact that we found this individual of mixed Neanderthal and Denisovan origins suggests that they interbred much more often than we thought," said Slon.

Paabo agreed: "They must have quite commonly had kids...