News: The More We Know, The Less We Know

From: x99lynx@...
Message: 13619
Date: 2002-05-03

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999307

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service


A man who died about 60,000 years ago in Australia could force a rethink of

our theory of human origins.


Researchers in Australia have accomplished the extremely difficult feat of

extracting DNA from his skeleton and were astonished to find the sequence is

unique, matching nothing seen before.


The DNA is the oldest ever recovered from human remains. It shows that while

the man is completely anatomically modern, he came from a genetic lineage

that is now extinct. This finding challenges the prevailing theory that all

modern humans are descended from a group of people who migrated from Africa

around 100,000 years ago.


"It's remarkable - totally unpredicted," says anthropologist Alan Mann of

the University of Pennsylvania.


Alan Thorne of the Australian National University in Canberra, who led the

new research, says: "A simplistic 'Out Of Africa' model is no longer

tenable."


But not all experts agree. "The genetic evidence is equivocal," says Colin

Groves, of the ANU. "The African origin model stands or falls by the fossil

evidence. In my opinion, it stands."


The new research contradicts a recent study of mitochondrial DNA, which

supported the Out of Africa theory (New Scientist online, 6 December 2000).


The remains of Mungo Man were found on the shores of Lake Mungo in

south-eastern Australia in 1974.


In 1995, a team led by Thorne began an attempt to extract genetic material

from the remains. Gregory Adcock and his colleagues at CSIRO Plant Industry

managed to replicate and sequence a single gene from Mungo Man's

mitochondria. The small genome of these cell powerhouses is passed down the

female line.


Simon Easteal, an evolutionary geneticist at ANU, then set about analysing

the sequence and comparing it with sequences of the same gene from nine

other early Australians - ranging in age from 8,000 to 15,000 years - as

well as 3,453 contemporary people from around the world, chimpanzees,

bonobos and two European Neanderthals.


According to Easteal's evolutionary tree, the line that led to the most

recent common ancestor of contemporary people, includes the ancient

Australians but excludes Mungo Man.


"We can say with a high degree of confidence that modern people arrived in

Australia before the new lineage [of the most recent common ancestor]

arrived," Easteal says.


The findings are due to be published in the online edition of the

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


For more on the DNA study of Mungo Man, see the 13 January issue of New

Scientist magazine.