Scientists Were Studying This Ancient DNA When They Discovered A Girl Whose Parents Were Two Different Species

What Does It Mean?

But, in layman’s terms, what does that imply? It all has to do with the concept of heterozygosity. In other words, if your parents were closely connected – say, second cousins – the quantity of heterozygosity in your DNA would be minimal. Those levels, on the other hand, would be quite high if you were the result of inter-species breeding. Does this make sense?

What Does It Mean

Out Of The Wazoo

And, in the instance of the bone discovered at Denisova Cave, it was unmistakably the latter. “It’s heterozygous out the wazoo,” computational biologist Richard E. Green told National Geographic of the ancient DNA. Slon had uncovered one of human evolution’s holy grails: a first-generation child born of interbreeding between species.

Out Of The Wazoo