How Neanderthals got human Y chromosomes, and the earliest human footprints in Arabia

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks with host Sarah Crespi about a series of 120,000-year-old human footprints found alongside prints from animals like asses, elephants, and camels in a dried-up lake on the Arabian Peninsula. These are the earliest human footprints found so far in Arabia and may help researchers better understand the history of early hominin migrations out of Africa. Continuing on the history of humanity theme, Sarah talks with Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, about her team’s efforts to fish the elusive Y chromosome out of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. It turns out Y chromosomes tell a different story about our past interbreeding with Neanderthals than previous tales told by the rest of the genome. Read a related Insight article. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ann Gibbons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:07.8	Icon Mount Sinai is the academic arm of the eight hospital Mount Sinai health system in New York City.
0:13.9	It's consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding.
0:18.0	Researchers at Icon Mount Sinai have made breakthrough discoveries in many fields vital to
0:23.0	advancing the health of patients, including cancer, COVID and long COVID, cardiology, neuroscience, and
0:30.4	artificial intelligence. The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. We find a way.
0:49.0	Welcome to the science podcast for September 25th, 2020. I'm Sarah Krusty. Each week, we feature the most interesting news and research published in science and sister journals. First up,
0:53.7	we have contributing correspondent
0:54.9	and Gibbons. We talk about what might be the earliest human footprints found on the Arabian
1:00.9	Peninsula. Continuing our history of humanity theme, I talked with Janet Kelso about the Y
1:06.7	chromosomes of our close cousins, Neanderthals and Denisovans, and how the Neanderthal
1:12.0	Y was mysteriously replaced with the Y chromosome from very early modern humans.
1:20.7	Now we have contributing correspondent Ann Gibbons. She wrote this week about the likely
1:25.3	earliest human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula.
1:29.1	Hi, Anne.
1:30.0	Hi, Sarah.
1:31.0	How old or how early are these footprints?
1:34.8	Well, that's a good question.
1:36.2	They threw a whole package of dating methods at them and came up with in the ballpark of
1:41.5	121,000 to 110,000 years old. Now, the dates are not absolute. There's some
1:49.7	questions about them, but that's a pretty good ballpark. How does this age compare to previous
1:55.6	hints or clues that humans, modern humans, early modern humans were on the Arabian Peninsula?
	...

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