Genome of extinct human species from fragment of a finger bone

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You've heard of our super-close relatives the Neanderthals, of course. But did you know there are far more species of humans that went extinct, like the tiny Floresiensis ("Hobbits")? There are 14 known species of human being that are no longer with us. These were all out-competed, possibly even murdered by homo sapiens (us!) and other human speciesor in some cases driven to extinction by rapidly changing climate conditions (hint, hint, we're changing the climate today faster than ever before!).

The newest addition to the group of known extinct humans are the Denisovans, who last lived approximately 30.000 years ago, at the same time as Neanderthal and modern humans roamed a similar region of Russia. Their remains (well, read on…) were found in a cave (Denisova Cave) around 10 years ago, even though they were not recognized as a new race of humans until 2010. Only a short while ago a group of German scientists has mapped the complete genome (DNA sequence) of these extinct human beings. Guess what they needed to do that? Just a bone fragment from a little piece of finger, which was, together with a wisdom tooth, the only found remains of the Denisovans in the cave.

With the full DNA sequence of Denisova Hominin, we can determine when and where our evolutionary lineages diverted and possible see what these extinct humans were like. Read more about this remarkable achievement on Nature.com. Some Denisovian genes probably live on through interbreeding with modern humans, since it looks like modern-day Melanesians and Australian Aboriginals have some Denisovian left in them. Fascinating stuff. More research is being done on a toe bone discovered in 2011.

So no worries, all you have to leave is a toe or a finger in a convenient, yet protected, location and perhaps future humans can bring you back to life! Your genes anyway.