Neanderthals and Denisovans divide
Nuclear DNA from the Pit of the Bones shows the two lineages had already parted by 430,000 years ago.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 30 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 30 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Sequencing nuclear DNA from Sima de los Huesos — an extraordinary technical achievement, since DNA at that age is normally destroyed — showed the individuals were on the Neanderthal branch and not the Denisovan one. That single result dates the Neanderthal-Denisovan divergence to before 430,000 years ago, and it pushed the recoverable genetic record back roughly ten times further than had been thought possible. Ancient DNA stopped being a Late Pleistocene tool at that moment.