From Newsgroup: talk.origins

https://www.science.org/content/article/ghost-long-extinct-ancestor-lives-people-today

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10478-8

The Nature paper is claimed to be open access and I was able to read it.

It has been suspected that Denisovans interbred with H. erectus because
they had some ancient looking DNA sequence that was not shared with Neanderthal and African Modern humans. The Denisovans interbred with
some of the modern humans and some of this ancient DNA can be found in
extant modern human descendants of those hybrids. This study found a
tooth protein variant from H. erectus could also be found in Denisovans
and modern humans descended from the Denisovan hybrids (Figure 4). It
is evidence that the ancient looking DNA sequence found in Denisovans
did come from interbreeding with H. erectus that occupied Asia before
the Denisovans got there.

H. erectus may have left Africa over a million years ago. The Homo that became Neanderthals and Denisovans may have left Africa around 800,000
years ago, but the lower bound that I recall is around 500,000 years.
H. erectus still existed as a separate species 400,000 years ago.

Ron Okimoto

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From Newsgroup: talk.origins

On 5/13/2026 1:36 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.science.org/content/article/ghost-long-extinct-ancestor- lives-people-today

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10478-8

The Nature paper is claimed to be open access and I was able to read it.

It has been suspected that Denisovans interbred with H. erectus because
they had some ancient looking DNA sequence that was not shared with Neanderthal and African Modern humans.-a The Denisovans interbred with
some of the modern humans and some of this ancient DNA can be found in extant modern human descendants of those hybrids.-a This study found a
tooth protein variant from H. erectus could also be found in Denisovans
and modern humans descended from the Denisovan hybrids (Figure 4).-a It
is evidence that the ancient looking DNA sequence found in Denisovans
did come from interbreeding with H. erectus that occupied Asia before
the Denisovans got there.

H. erectus may have left Africa over a million years ago.-a The Homo that became Neanderthals and Denisovans may have left Africa around 800,000
years ago, but the lower bound that I recall is around 500,000 years. H. erectus still existed as a separate species 400,000 years ago.

Ron Okimoto

This means that there are some modern humans existing today that contain
DNA sequence that comes from 3 other populations of Homo. South Asians,
and Australasians whose ancestors interbred with Denisovans have
Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Asian Homo erectus derived DNA sequences in
their genomes. Modern Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Asian Homo
erectus all share the same Homo erectus common ancestor, but the Asian
H. erectus left Africa over a million years ago, Neanderthals and
Denisovans left Africa between 500,000 and 800,000 years ago.
Denisovans interbred with Asian H. erectus at some point, and Modern
humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago and interbred with
Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Most of us are only a couple percent Neanderthal, but some Australasians
are over 12% Denisovan and some of them contain a little H. erectus DNA
that came with the Denisovan DNA.

Ron Okimoto

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