Paranthropus DNA admixture in modern Africans? Évolution humaine, Australopithèques

Scientists just recovered DNA proteins from a 2 million year old Paranthropus robustus. The Paranthropus was discovered at Swartkrans cave in South Africa north of Johannesburg.

The oldest DNA recovered from a Hominin prior to this project, was from an 800,000 year old Homo antecessor in Spain, and before that a 400,000 year old Neanderthal.

This is an amazing discovery, and paleoanthropologists are giddy over the possibilities of finding DNA from Lucy - Australopithecus and other early Hominins.

But the find could also have political ramifications. Some modern Human populations have archaic DNA admixture with early Hominins. Europeans are admixed with Neanderthals; Asians and Melanesians with Denisovans.

Could the Paranthropus DNA prove modern Africans have admixture from a more primitive Hominin?

Another possibility, is Paranthropus an ancestor to Homo naledi? Lee Berger has hinted in Cave of Bones (now on Netflix) that they've got the Homo naledi DNA. Is there a connection?

Évolution humaine, Australopithèques

[ericvulgate]

I like the content but you have to dial back the music so I can hear you speaking.

[raijinenel]

I don't understand why it is so controversial to state facts. Great work, keep it up

[joeelliott]

The main wave of modern humans that spread over Europe, Asia, Australia and the America's left Africa 60, 000 years ago.

What would have to be true for:
a. Modern African populations to have some Paranthropus mixture in their DNA.
b. Modern Europe, Asian, Australia and the America's populations to have no Paranthropus mixture in their DNA.

1. Paranthropus survived until with 60, 000 years ago. Unlikely. No evidence of that to date.
2. No mixture between Paranthropus and modern man occurred before 60, 000 years ago. Otherwise, all people of the world would carry some of this DNA.
3. After hundreds of thousands of years, with no mixing between Paranthropus and modern human populations, this mixture occurred for the first time, sometime during the last 60, 000 years.

This all sounds highly unlikely, to say the least.

[Egyptologist]

This is huge! I need to read the paper. Are they making a genetic connection yet?

[jonswap]

The author obviously has read this and doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about.
1. What has been recovered is proteins, not DNA. DNA degrades well before 2 million years.
2. Paranthropus was a different species resembling a gorilla. Modern Africans couldn't have interbred with it any more than the can with gorilla's.
3. If Africans had proteins in common with Paranthropus, it would be through the line of ancestry that eventually led to us - not by interbreeding with an archaic species, and all of including non Africans would have the same proteins, not just Africans.
4. What the scientists are hoping to prove is whether Australiopithicus or Paranthropus is in our direct line of ancestry, not whether modern Africans interbred recently with Paranthropus. Besides, Paranthropus went extinct long before out species emerged (about 300, 000 to 150, 000 years ago.

[flenwarrior]

the sound mixxing is horrendous, i can barely hear whats been said over the generic copy and paste music. the knowledge shared should stand by itself not huge pauses between sentances and blaring music

[IbnFarteen]

Music is silly distraction. Can't finish it.

[jasonborn]

One thing I'm confused by is why there's a belief Homo sapiens originate from Eurasia. I'm familiar with H. antecessor, but clearly this was an archaic species with only a 1, 000cc cranial volume. And next we have Apidima 1 at 210 kya, but this age is younger than the oldest sapiens skull found in Africa (Florisbad skull dating approx 233 kya). It may be argued Florisbad does not have fully modern morphology, but in comparison Apidima 1 also shows a mixture of archaic and modern features. In addition, the oldest Acheulean tool assemblages are found in Africa which expand later into Eurasia.

It certainly makes sense that numerous ethnicities evolved across multiple continents, but at the end of the day we're all Homo sapiens sharing the same gracile morphology and globular braincases. My point is that I agree with ethnic and/or various tribe classifications yet we're all AMHs. The fact various ethnicities possess small percentages of archaic and ghost DNA does not alter that every living population still exhibits anatomically modern morphology. If my conclusions are flawed please provide evidence showing how I'm mistaken. Thanks for your time.

[drbigmdftnu]

That's a pretty far-out hypothesis

[gundisaluusmenendiz]

I don't know why my comments aren't being posted but here's my reply to you on our conversation we were having...

One thing the geneticist that I knew and Michael Hammer have in common, all three of us belong to the same genetic paternal lineage G2a, like Otzi the iceman.
That's how I met the geneticist who discovered Albert Perry's genome.
He was an administrator on FTDNA's G2a group and facebook, and got interested in me because I carry a rare G2a lineage that dates to 10K yrs old, so we became friends for awhile until Trump came into the scene and I didn't know he was a Trump hating radical leftist, that's when our friendship took a turn for the worst when I told him to gfh and haven't spoken to him ever since 2015.
I can't mention his name but he was fired from FTDNA for having a loud voice on secretive projects like Albert Perry's genome, if you watch Hammer's lecture on A00 he specifically points out Albert Perry's genome is "Archaic".
A00 sits between Ape and Human.

Prior to the discovery of A00, there was a huge discrepancy between genetics and archaeology on the date of origin for AMH's.
The discovery of A00 changed everything, after the discovery of A00 anthropologists moved in quickly on Jebel Irhoud and changed his classification from Neanderthal to Anatomical Modern Human.
Where anyone with a brain and a pair of eyes can see Jebel Irhoud's skull is "archaic" and Not AMH.