Researchers suggest that a protein present in present sub-Saharan populations indicates that in the distant past humans cross-bred with a “ghost species”.
It is believed that members of different species do not reproduce among each other, or that if they do, they don’t usually have fertile offspring (as happens with mules or ligers).
But the past of the human species shows that our history is far more complicated.
It is becoming increasingly clear that archaic human species, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens, crossbred and had fertile offspring.
And that’s despite the fact that they are said to be different species.
A new research presented in Molecular Biology and Evolution has uncovered traces of one of these interesting encounters. The research was led by Gokcumen and Stefan Ruhl, DDS, Ph.D., a professor of oral biology in UB’s School of Dental Medicine.
The evidence has been discovered by chance in the saliva of modern humans, and point to the existence of a ghost human species, which means that it lacks fossil evidence that proves its existence, but points how the ‘ghost species’ reproduced with the ancestors of current sub-Saharan populations.
“It seems that interbreeding between different early hominin species is not the exception — it’s the norm,” says Omer Gokcumen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.
