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(Others weigh in here (Nature, ScienceDaily), here (BBC), and here (The Scientist , New Scientist).)
From the New York Times:
The mismatch between the anatomical and genetic evidence surprised the scientists, who are now rethinking human evolution over the past few hundred thousand years. It is possible, for example, that there are many extinct human populations that scientists have yet to discover. They might have interbred, swapping DNA. Scientists hope that further studies of extremely ancient human DNA will clarify the mystery.
“Right now, we’ve basically generated a big question mark,” said Matthias Meyer, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author of the new study.
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The new finding is hard to reconcile with the picture of human evolution that has been emerging in recent years based on fossils and ancient DNA. Denisovans were believed to be limited to East Asia, and they were not thought to look so Neanderthal-like. More.
Researchers are currently “rethinking” the last few hundred thousand years of human evolution.
As they say in the movie business, the story has been sent back to Rewrite and needs a script doctor, if not a script ambulance.
From PBS: