Could deep learning help paleontologists and geneticists hunt for ghosts? When modern humans first migrated out of Africa 70,000 years ago, at least two related species, now extinct, were already waiting for them on the Eurasian landmass. These were the Neanderthals and Denisovans, archaic humans who interbred with those early moderns, leaving bits of their DNA behind today in the genomes of people of non-African descent. But there have been growing hints of an even more convoluted and colorful history: A team of researchers reported in Nature last summer, for instance, that a bone fragment found in a Siberian cave belonged to the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The finding marked the first fossil evidence of a first-generation human hybrid.

Artificial intelligence may be able to work out the maximum lifespans of extinct species and early humans. The technique relies on analysing specific regions of DNA that are linked to ageing. Benjamin Mayne at CSIRO, a research organisation in Australia, and his colleagues built an AI to predict the lifespan of different animals. To this the team first trained an AI on the known genomes of 252 species from five classes of animals, including mammals, reptiles and fish, and their maximum lifespans. The AI then narrowed down almost 30,000 DNA regions to just 42 that related to lifespan. This was then used to create a formula that can convert these 42 regions into a prediction of maximum lifespan.

Could deep learning help paleontologists and geneticists hunt for ghosts? When modern humans first migrated out of Africa 70,000 years ago, at least two related species, now extinct, were already waiting for them on the Eurasian landmass. These were the Neanderthals and Denisovans, archaic humans who interbred with those early moderns, leaving bits of their DNA behind today in the genomes of people of non-African descent. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences. But there have been growing hints of an even more convoluted and colorful history: A team of researchers reported in Nature last summer, for instance, that a bone fragment found in a Siberian cave belonged to the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.

Can the minds of machines teach us something new about what it means to be human? When it comes to the intricate story of our species' complex origins and evolution, it appears that they can. A recent study used machine learning technology to analyze eight leading models of human origins and evolution, and the program identified evidence in the human genome of a "ghost population" of human ancestors. The analysis suggests that a previously unknown and long-extinct group of hominins interbred with Homo sapiens in Asia and Oceania somewhere along the long, winding road of human evolutionary history, leaving behind only fragmented traces in modern human DNA. The study, published in Nature Communications, is one of the first examples of how machine learning can help reveal clues to our own origins.

Could deep learning help paleontologists and geneticists hunt for ghosts? When modern humans first migrated out of Africa 70,000 years ago, at least two related species, now extinct, were already waiting for them on the Eurasian landmass. These were the Neanderthals and Denisovans, archaic humans who interbred with those early moderns, leaving bits of their DNA behind today in the genomes of people of non-African descent. But there have been growing hints of an even more convoluted and colorful history: A team of researchers reported in Nature last summer, for instance, that a bone fragment found in a Siberian cave belonged to the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The finding marked the first fossil evidence of a first-generation human hybrid.

High tech, meet ancient history. Remember that time the Jetsons met the Flintstones? Well, we have for you today a scientific finding that combines future technology with ancient human evolution. Artificial intelligence discovered a whole new hominoid species. Researchers from Estonia and Spain used deep learning to build a model for human evolution.

The new research comes from Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu. In studies researchers have applied deep learning algorithms and statistical methods to establish the footprint of a new hominid. The application of human DNA computational analysis indicates that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans. At some stage this hominid cross bred with'Out of Africa' modern humans within the region of the world that is now Asia. The scientific theory of recent African origin of modern humans is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens).

Using artificial intelligence, a number of European evolutionary biologists now believe that humans have an ancient ancestor whose identity is unknown to modern science. The ancestor, based out of Asia, would have been a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans, a subspecies of archaic humans. The Denisovans are less well-known than the famous Neanderthals, but the two were separate groups who split off from their common ancestor around 744,000 years ago. While Neanderthals settled in Europe and parts of western Asia, Denisovan remains have been found in central Asia and Siberia--their name comes from the Denisova Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains, where a Denisovan bone was first discovered in 2008. The groups were genetically independent from each other.

It's a well-known fact that there was a lot of interspecies mingling back in the day. Modern humans have fragments of DNA from our ancient relatives, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans – and now, a third, previously unknown, mystery species. An international team of researchers have examined human DNA using deep learning algorithms to analyze genetic clues to human evolution for the very first time. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications. It's long been suspected that, further to the Neanderthals and Denisovans, people of Asian descent have a third ancestor that interbred with ancient humans.

Early humans had sex with Neanderthals and other primitive cousins far more often than thought, according to a new study. DNA tests on ancient remains show that the two species interbred at'multiple points in time' over the course of the 35,000 years they shared the plains of Eurasia. Researchers said the crossbreeding began shortly after humans came into contact with Neanderthals after they began to pour out of Africa around 75,000 years ago. Previous studies have shown that around two per cent of our DNA is made up of Neanderthal genes, passed down when they mated with our ancestors. Until now, it was not known how often the two species interbred - and many scientists believed the shared DNA came from a one-off encounter.