Ancient human hybrid found in Siberia

Ninety thousand years ago, four kinds of humans walked the Earth. Denisovans lived in Siberia, Neanderthals in Europe, Hobbits on an Indonesian Island, and modern humans all over the place. Last month bits of the human evolutionary jigsaw fell into place. The 90,000-year-old fossil bone of a girl was found in a Siberian cave. Her DNA revealed that her parents were of two different species. Her father was a Denisovan (Homo denisova) and her mother a Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis), it was reported in the journal Nature.

We have many examples of paleolithic interbreedings but this one is out of the box. The chance of finding a fossil first-generation offspring of a hybrid between two ancient human species must be zillions to one.

Svante Paabo, co-leader of the team with Viviane Slon, conducted the genetic research in Leipzig and at first thought they ‘‘had screwed up on something’’, but further work confirmed their finding. ‘‘We’d almost caught these people in the act,’’ Paabo says. The fossil girl has been given the name ‘‘Denny’’ and is assured of a place in biological textbooks straight away.

Last month came news from the Indonesian island of Flores and its short inhabitants, known as Hobbits (Homo floresiensis, who arrived on Flores Island as normal-sized humans well over 100,000 years ago but evolved into a shorter people only 1.08 metres tall. Their tiny stone tools and artefacts matched their small hands.

Modern humans settled Flores later and possibly ate the last Hobbit about 20,000 years ago. These modern humans still live on Flores Island and they average only 1.47m tall – 10 centimetres shorter than the rest of humanity.

The question arises: did modern humans interbreed with the Hobbits or did they shrink independently? Researchers at Princeton University reveal in the journal Science that the modern short people on Flores Island today show no genetic link with the ancient Hobbits, so must have evolved their short size independently.

Which raises another question. How come the island has spawned two species of short humans, a dwarf elephant, as well as those giant komodo dragons? Something in the water?

Modern humans settled Flores later and possibly ate the last Hobbit about 20,000 years ago.