Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Homo antecessor is not the ancestor!

Meanwhile, ancient protein is marching onward. A new paper in Nature, The dental proteome of Homo antecessor:

The phylogenetic relationships between hominins of the Early Pleistocene epoch in Eurasia, such as Homo antecessor, and hominins that appear later in the fossil record during the Middle Pleistocene epoch, such as Homo sapiens, are highly debated…Here we present the dental enamel proteomes of H. antecessor from Atapuerca (Spain)…Homo erectus from Dmanisi (Georgia)two key fossil assemblages that have a central role in models of Pleistocene hominin morphology, dispersal and divergence. We provide evidence that H. antecessor is a close sister lineage to subsequent Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, including modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. This placement implies that the modern-like face of H. antecessor—that is, similar to that of modern humans—may have a considerably deep ancestry in the genus Homo, and that the cranial morphology of Neanderthals represents a derived form. By recovering AMELY-specific peptide sequences, we also conclude that the H. antecessor molar fragment from Atapuerca that we analysed belonged to a male individual. Finally, these H. antecessor and H. erectus fossils preserve evidence of enamel proteome phosphorylation and proteolytic digestion that occurred in vivo during tooth formation…

This is an 800,000 year old sample from Spain. Proteins are more robust than DNA, so they last longer, but they tend to give less information. But at the scale of species-wide differences there is enough variation to establish some tentative relationships.

Previously some researchers argued H. antecessor was ancestral to modern humans. This seems to suggest this is unlikely. Or at least that antecessor is not the dominant direct ancestor.

3 thoughts on “Homo antecessor is not the ancestor!

  1. ” Proteins are more robust than DNA, so they last longer, but they tend to give less information.”

    Just how granular can we get? Could we tell a part a Yoruba from a Han using proteomics?

  2. In other (less interesting) fossil news, direct dating of Kabwe fossil (from the cover of the book in this post) to 274k – 324k – https://phys.org/news/2020-04-fossil-skull-modern-human-ancestry.html.

    That is interesting as makes harder to say that this sort of human was completely replaced by Homo Sap forms by this time.

    I wonder if there is any possibility of using this method to firmly date the Omo Kibish 1 and 2 remains. Those puzzle me because Omo Kibish 1 is so morphologically modern in appearance (very small retracted face under a globular braincase) and currently dated at around 200 kya, and 100 kya before anything close to being as gracile and morphologically modern is found anywhere else (and even those are less gracile). And there has been a bit of back and forth about their date – https://anthropology.net/2008/07/08/the-age-of-omo-i-and-omo-ii-from-the-kibish-formation-omo-valley-ethiopia/ (first dated indirectly to be 130k, then after being dethroned as the earliest AMH by the more robust 160k Herto skull, re-dated to 198k, again by indirect evidence…).

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