Scientists in Germany have been able to get enough DNA from a fossilized pinky to produce a high-quality DNA sequence of the pinky’s owner.
“It’s a really amazing-quality genome,” says David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston. “It’s as good as modern human genome sequences, from a lot of ways of measuring it.”
The pinky belonged to a girl who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Scientists aren’t sure about the exact age. She is a member of an extinct group of humans called Denisovans. The name comes from Denisova cave in Siberia, where the pinky was found.
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