WE WUZ GHOSTS

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5-7% of Sub Saharans have "ghost lineage" to previously unknown ancient species

>Now, researchers suggest that a "ghost" lineage of ancient humans may have contributed the DNA for a protein called mucin-7 found in the saliva of modern humans living in sub-Saharan Africa today.

>"About 5 to 7 percent of every population in sub-Saharan Africa has this divergent protein," said Omer Gokcumen, study co-senior author of the new study and an evolutionary genomicist at the University at Buffalo in New York.

>That this variant is so widespread across Africa suggests that it may have entered the modern human gene pool before the ancestors of modern humans separated into different regions across that continent, Gokcumen said. Given the usual rate at which genes mutate during the course of time, the researchers estimated the interbreeding event with this mystery lineage "may have happened about 200,000 years ago, but this lineage separated from the ancestors of modern humans maybe 500,000 years or 1 million years ago," Gokcumen added.

So they Sub Saharans bred with another hominid that split from Humans up to ~1 million years ago