By combining statistical data with deep learning algorithms, some evolutionary biologists now say that they have uncovered definite proof about a hitherto-unknown ancestor of modern-day humans.
In their whitepaper, researchers Mayukh Mondal, Jaume Bertranpetit and Oscar Lao claim to have identified, in the genome of Asian individuals, traces of a now-extinct species that was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans and cross-bred with modern humans tens of thousands of years ago.
The research has been published in Nature journal, and claims that the species was “either related to the Neanderthal-Denisova clade or diverged early from the Denisova lineage”.