Human Heredity 11th Edition by Michael Cummings

Exercise 24

The Denisovan genome contains sequences that originated from an unknown human species. Using Figure 1, speculate on which species this might be. Is it possible that there are other ancestral species that may remain to be discovered that would change the phylogeny presented in the figure?
FIGURE 1 Estimates for the dates of origin and extinction for the three main groups of hominins ( green , blue , and orange ). The australopithecines split into two groups about 2.7 million years ago. One of those groups, the genus Homo , contains the ancestors to our species, H. sapiens.