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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Genomic analysis of Czech fossil reveals the oldest modern human skull from Europe

Cosimo Posth
Kay Prüfer
  • Fonction : Auteur
He Yu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Alexander Stoessel
  • Fonction : Auteur
Maria A Spyrou
  • Fonction : Auteur
Marco Mattonai
  • Fonction : Auteur
Erika Ribechini
  • Fonction : Auteur
Thomas Higham
  • Fonction : Auteur
Petr Velemínský
  • Fonction : Auteur
Johannes Krause

Résumé

Following their dispersal out of Africa, modern humans admixed with Neandertals ~60,000-50,000 years ago, and then expanded into Europe a few thousand years before Neandertals disappeared. The genetic composition of these first Europeans is, so far, not well characterized since only a very limited number of individuals older than 40,000 years have been genetically analyzed. Those include Fumane 2 (Benazzi et al., 2015), Oase 1 (Fu et al., 2015) and Bacho Kiro individuals (Hajdinjak et al., 2021) from Europe, Tianyuan in East Asia (Yang et al., 2017) and Ust’-Ishim (Fu et al., 2014) in Siberia. However, none of the analyzed individuals is associated with an almost complete skull like is the case for Zlatý kůň, which was discovered more than 70 years ago in present-day Czechia. The age of this specimen estimated with archeological, morphological and radiocarbon dating methods is inconsistent and highly disputed. Here, we report both mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), genome-wide capture data and a ~4-fold shotgun genome generated from the temporal bone of Zlatý kůň to shed light on its age and assess its genetic profile. In a phylogenetic analysis, the complete mtDNA sequence of this individual falls within mtDNA haplogroup N and exhibits a short branch length. In addition, the nuclear genome represents a deeply divergent out-of-African lineage that did not contribute genetically to either Europeans or Asians but carries a similar proportion of Neandertal ancestry like other Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Several radiocarbon dating attempts resulted in inconclusive results though the length of the introgressed Neandertal blocks are longer than those observed in the 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim genome from Siberia. This suggests that Zlatý kůň is at least as old as Ust’-Ishim and thus is the earliest modern human skull sequenced from Europe to date. In conclusion, similarly to Neandertals, the genetic ancestry uncovered in Zlatý kůň and in other pre-40,000-year-old modern humans largely disappeared from Europe. This provides interesting implications for a possible common demise of European early modern humans and Neandertals, which will require further interdisciplinary investigations. References Benazzi, S., Slon, V., Talamo, S., Negrino, F., Peresani, M., Bailey, S.E., Sawyer, S., Panetta, D., Vicino, G., Starnini, E., Mannino, M.A., Salvadori, P.A., Meyer, M., Paabo, S., Hublin, J.J., 2015. Archaeology. The makers of the Protoaurignacian and implications for Neandertal extinction. Science 348, 793-796. Fu, Q., Hajdinjak, M., Moldovan, O.T., Constantin, S., Mallick, S., Skoglund, P., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., Lazaridis, I., Nickel, B., Viola, B., Prufer, K., Meyer, M., Kelso, J., Reich, D., Paabo, S., 2015. An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor. Nature 524, 216-219. Fu, Q., Li, H., Moorjani, P., Jay, F., Slepchenko, S.M., Bondarev, A.A., Johnson, P.L., Aximu-Petri, A., Prufer, K., de Filippo, C., Meyer, M., Zwyns, N., Salazar-Garcia, D.C., Kuzmin, Y.V., Keates, S.G., Kosintsev, P.A., Razhev, D.I., Richards, M.P., Peristov, N.V., Lachmann, M., Douka, K., Higham, T.F., Slatkin, M., Hublin, J.J., Reich, D., Kelso, J., Viola, T.B., Paabo, S., 2014. Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia. Nature 514, 445-449. Hajdinjak, M., Mafessoni, F., Skov, L., Vernot, B., Hübner, A., Fu, Q., Essel, E., Nagel, S., Nickel, B., Richter, J., 2021. Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry. Nature 592, 253-257. Yang, M.A., Gao, X., Theunert, C., Tong, H., Aximu-Petri, A., Nickel, B., Slatkin, M., Meyer, M., Paabo, S., Kelso, J., Fu, Q., 2017. 40,000-Year-Old Individual from Asia Provides Insight into Early Population Structure in Eurasia. Curr Biol 27, 3202-3208 e3209.
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Dates et versions

hal-03543810 , version 1 (13-03-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03543810 , version 1

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Cosimo Posth, Kay Prüfer, He Yu, Alexander Stoessel, Maria A Spyrou, et al.. Genomic analysis of Czech fossil reveals the oldest modern human skull from Europe. Annual Meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution, Sep 2021, online, France. ⟨hal-03543810⟩
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