‘A History of Contact’: Geneticists Rewrite the Story of Neanderthals and Other Early Humans

Detection of modern human-to-Neanderthal gene flow (H→N) and its consequences. Modern human-to-Neanderthal admixture causes a local increase in heterozygosity in the Neanderthal genome, a feature that enabled approaches to quantify and detect introgressed sequences. We used modern human-introgressed sequences in the Neanderthal genome to refine estimates of Neanderthal ancestry in contemporary humans by decomposing IBDmix-detected … Read more

Voyager 1 is back! Legendary probe makes contact from interstellar space

A gentle voice we have longed for drifts back to us from interstellar space, 15 billion miles away. Voyager 1 – the most distant man-made object on Earth – sounds like itself again on the deep space radio network after six months of gibberish. Scientists at NASA are thrilled. “We’re back, baby!” reads an X-post … Read more