2023-05-09 10:27:00
If you’ve ever wondered where our curious nose shape comes from, a new study seems to have the answer.
in a document just posted in Communications Biologyscientists from Argentina, the United Kingdom, China, France, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Germany and Brazil have discovered that our ancestors inherited Neanderthal DNA that influenced the structure of our noses. A modification that allowed our ancestors to move to other colder regions.
Neanderthals already hunted giant elephants
The analysis examined data from more than 6,000 Latin American participants with European, Native American and African roots, who were part of the CANDELA project led by University College London (UCL). This study iincluded individuals from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru, concluding that a particular gene gave rise to a taller (or longer, measured from top to bottom) nose.
And it is that, given that the nose allows us to regulate the temperature and humidity of the air we breathe, it is possible that the different shapes of the nose are better adapted to the different climates in which our ancestors lived.
MATCHING FACES AND GENES
The researchers matched the participants’ genetic information with images of their faces, focusing on the distances between certain facial points, such as the tip of the nose and the edge of the lips, to analyze how different facial features were linked to the presence of different genetic markers.
This way, 33 genomic regions related to face shape were found26 of which could be compared with data from other ethnicities, obtained from participants from East Asia, Europe and Africa.
Neanderthal extinction may have been due to sex with humans
In a specific region of the genome, ATF3 call, the researchers found that many people in the study with Native American ancestry (and others with East Asian ancestry in another sample) had Neanderthal-inherited genetic material in this gene, which was associated with increased nasal height. They also found that this genetic region showed evidence of natural selection, indicating that it provided an advantage to those who carried such genetic material.
Neanderthals and Denisovans
Neanderthals were a species of hominin that inhabited Europe and western Asia approximately 400,000 to 40,000 years ago. Modern humans share between 1% and 2% of DNA with Neanderthals, due to reproduction between both species approximately 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
modern humans (A wise man) mixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans as they were encountered during the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa. So it is not surprising that this recent finding represents the second discovery of how DNA from archaic humans, other than Homo sapiens, has influenced the structure of our faces. The same group of researchers published a paper in 2021 about a gene that affects the shape of the lips, which was inherited from the ancient Denisovans.
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