Ancient human DNA suggests minimal interbreeding

A 40,000-year-old human skeleton previously excavated in China has yielded genetic clues to Stone Age evolution.

Ancient DNA from cell nuclei and maternally inherited mitochondria indicates that this individual belonged to a population that eventually gave rise to many present-day Asians and Native Americans, says a team led by Qiaomei Fu and Svante Pääbo, evolutionary geneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.