A Nature study led by Qiaomei Fu pulled proteins from the enamel of six Homo erectus teeth from three Chinese sites (including Zhoukoudian, home of “Peking Man”), all about 400,000 years old, ScienceDaily reports. DNA doesn’t survive that long, but enamel proteins do.
- All six share an amino acid variant never seen in any other hominin, which settles whether the Hexian fossils are Homo erectus
- A second variant shows up in Denisovans, and the matching gene variant appears in about 21% of people in the Philippines and about 1% in India
- The authors’ read: genes passed from East Asian Homo erectus to Denisovans, then into modern Southeast Asians and Oceanians
My take
Reading proteins from teeth that old is impressive science. The neat textbook tree keeps turning into a tangled web.
God Bless, and Happy hacking!
