Philip L. F. Johnson

TL;DR: The genomic data suggest that Neandertals mixed with modern human ancestors some 120,000 years ago, leaving traces of Ne andertal DNA in contemporary humans, suggesting that gene flow from Neand Bertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other.

TL;DR: It is shown that interbreeding, albeit of low magnitude, occurred among many hominin groups in the Late Pleistocene and a definitive list of substitutions that became fixed in modern humans after their separation from the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans is established.

TL;DR: A tooth found in Denisova Cave carries a mitochondrial genome highly similar to that of the finger bone, further indicating that Denisovans have an evolutionary history distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans.

TL;DR: This work describes mapDamage 2.0, a user-friendly package that extends the original features of mapDamage by incorporating a statistical model of DNA damage, and provides estimates of four key features of aDNA molecules: the average length of overhangs, nick frequency, cytosine deamination rates in both double-stranded regions and overhangers, and base quality scores according to their probability of being damaged.

TL;DR: The high-quality genome sequence of a ∼45,000-year-old modern human male from Siberia derives from a population that lived before—or simultaneously with—the separation of the populations in western and eastern Eurasia and carries a similar amount of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians.