“Unearthing Neanderthal Population History Using Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA from Cave Sediments”, Benjamin Vernot, Elena I. Zavala, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Zenobia Jacobs, Viviane Slon, Fabrizio Mafessoni, Frédéric Romagné, Alice Pearson, Martin Petr, Nohemi Sala, Adrián Pablos, Arantza Aranburu, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Eudald Carbonell, Bo Li, Maciej T. Krajcarz, Andrey I. Krivoshapkin, Kseniya A. Kolobova, Maxim B. Kozlikin, Michael V. Shunkov, Anatoly P. Derevianko, Bence Viola, Steffi Grote, Elena Essel, David López Herráez, Sarah Nagel, Birgit Nickel, Julia Richter, Anna Schmidt, Benjamin Peter, Janet Kelso, Richard G. Roberts, Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Matthias Meyer2021-04-15 (human evolution, genome sequencing; backlinks; similar)⁠:

Bones and teeth are important sources of Pleistocene hominin DNA, but are rarely recovered at archaeological sites. Mitochondrial DNA has been retrieved from cave sediments, but provides limited value for studying population relationships.

We therefore developed methods for the enrichment and analysis of nuclear DNA from sediments, and applied them to cave deposits in western Europe and southern Siberia dated to between ~200,000 and 50,000 years ago.

We detect a population replacement in northern Spain ~100,000 years ago, accompanied by a turnover of mitochondrial DNA. We also identify 2 radiation events in Neanderthal history during the early part of the Late Pleistocene.

Our work lays the ground for studying the population history of ancient hominins from trace amounts of nuclear DNA in sediments.

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