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Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago

A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.
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  1. Anna Ikarashi

    1. Anna Ikarashi is a science writer based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Human ancestors in Africa were pushed to the brink of extinction around 900,000 years ago, a study shows. The work1, published in Science, suggests a drastic reduction in the population of our ancestors well before our species, Homo sapiens, emerged. The population of breeding individuals was reduced to just 1,280 and didn’t expand again for another 117,000 years.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02712-4

References

  1. Hu, W. et al. Science 381, 979–984 (2023).

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  2. Ashton, N. & Stringer, C. Science 381, 947–948 (2023).

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