title: An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor.
abstract: Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared in Europe approximately 39,000-41,000 years ago but they have contributed 1-3% of the DNA of present-day people in Eurasia. Here we analyse DNA from a 37,000-42,000-year-old modern human from Peştera cu Oase, Romania. Although the specimen contains small amounts of human DNA, we use an enrichment strategy to isolate sites that are informative about its relationship to Neanderthals and present-day humans. We find that on the order of 6-9% of the genome of the Oase individual is derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back. However, the Oase individual does not share more alleles with later Europeans than with East Asians, suggesting that the Oase population did not contribute substantially to later humans in Europe.
authors.affiliation: 1] Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, CAS, Beijing 100044, China [2] Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA [3] Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Qiaomei
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Mateja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hajdinjak
authors.affiliation: Emil Racoviţă" Institute of Speleology, Cluj Branch, 400006 Cluj, Romania.
authors.forename: Oana Teodora
authors.initials: OT
authors.lastname: Moldovan
authors.affiliation: Emil Racoviţă" Institute of Speleology, Department of Geospeleology and Paleontology, 010986 Bucharest 12, Romania.
authors.forename: Silviu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Constantin
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA [2] Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA [3] Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Swapan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mallick
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Pontus
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Skoglund
authors.affiliation: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Nadin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rohland
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Iosif
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lazaridis
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Birgit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Nickel
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany [2] Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany [3] Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2S2, Canada.
authors.forename: Bence
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Viola
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Kay
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Prüfer
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kelso
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA [2] Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA [3] Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reich
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
authors.forename: Svante
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pääbo
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D005202:Asia, Eastern; D005580:Fossils; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D007198:Indians, North American / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D059125:Neanderthals / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D012383:Romania; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013997:Time Factors; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics