THE MYSTERY OF BEING HUMAN
Mystery 1 WHO IS OUR DIRECT ANCESTOR?
Mystery 2 HOW DID WE CONQUER THE WORLD?
Mystery 3 WHY ARE WE THE ONLY ONES LEFT?
Mystery 1 WHO IS OUR DIRECT ANCESTOR?
Proteins could settle the ultimate paternity suit
Take a tooth from a rhino, add one ancient 300kg ape, two extinct human species and a team of scientists in Copenhagen using a new scientific technique to analyse proteins – and you have the ingredients of a story that will reveal the origins of mankind.
The molar tooth is large – five centimetres wide and four high – yet relatively insignificant. Some 1.77 million years ago, it was located in the mouth of a now-extinct species of rhino that roamed Europe’s Caucasus region, specifically in Dmanisi, Georgia, not far from the country’s modern capital of Tbilisi. Yet the study of this tooth has led to a new era in the exploration of our own genus, Homo sapiens.
It was discoveries that scientists made as they studied this tooth that have allowed us to map out our family tree anew, in detail, millions of years further back than previously possible. For the first time scientists will be able to identify the genus that was the ancestor of all of mankind – indeed they are already close to doing so.
In 2019, the rhino tooth shot to fame among scientists when a team headed by biochemist Enrico Capellini from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark published the results of their analysis of the tooth. Due to the tooth’s age, it no longer offered usable DNA, so instead the scientists examined its protein content. Proteins are produced based on cell genes, and so they are a reflection of DNA sequences. And just like genes, it turns out that proteins can reveal their owner’s family relations.
The scientists used a new variant of the mass spectrometry method to analyse the tooth’s proteins, and they were subsequently able to compare them to similar proteins from other extinct rhinos and modern rhino species. It turned out that the owner of the tooth belonged to a branch of the family tree that later split into other species, such as the woolly rhino that became extinct after the most recent ice age some 8000 years ago. The studies also showed that the fossil tooth owner shares its ancestors with the modern Sumatran rhino.
Teeth give us an extra million years
When the extinct rhino from Dmanisi was still eating leaves 1.77 million years ago, the world was in the middle of an ice age. Huge ice caps slid back and forth in the Northern Hemisphere, and our own genus, Homo sapiens, was still more than a million years away from making an appearance. Our more remote
