Heather Hatch 8th Period: Ancient Human Genome Found in Africa

Last Thursday a group of scientists discovered a humans remains from over 4,500 thousand years ago in Ethiopia. This is a huge discovery because before it was thought that a full human DNA discovery was impossible in such a tropical climate, but now this gives scientists hope that they can find more human remains that are far older (possibly a million years) in the near future. The human remains found look very different from modern African features. This means it can show us in great detail about our history as a human species. Other Homo Genus have also been found, such as: Homo Naledi. The fact that technology has advanced this far is quite interesting and amazing. In the 1980s scientists couldn't even find hope that being able to find an entire genome in DNA from a fossil was possible. This is because once a human being or animal  dies its DNA slowly starts to deteriorate, making it difficult to recover complete genomes. This science slowly started to develop when in the 1990s scientists could piece DNA together from different sources and create a longer strand. But, by 2010 researchers assembled the genome from 38,000 Neanderthal fossils in Croatia. The reason why it took so long to do this was because scientists thought that hot and humid climates would help deteriorate DNA even faster leading them away from those places. Now that we have proved that incorrect a whole new world of discoveries has opened. I find anything that has to do human remains interesting because I am obsessed with the show Bones, but I also know that they are extremely helpful to scientists research and data. This makes me happy for the people who now have the information they need to make more amazing discoveries.


Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/science/scientists-sequence-first-ancient-human-genome-from-africa.html?action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront