New Branch In Human Evolution?

"It was a shock to find DNA from a new type of ancestor that has not been on our radar screens", says Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. In the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, Svante uncovered what seems to be the DNA of a new hominid line. A hominid is an animal belonging to the family of mammals linking humans and primates together through evolution. However, the connection was not discovered through fossils. Instead it was discovered through the DNA in the remnants of a finger bone belonging to this hominid living in the Altai Mountains 48,000 to 30,000 years ago. It is the first time a species or evolution classification has been done through a genetic sequence! These creatures left Africa about 1 million years ago, according to Pääbo and Johannes Krause, a graduate of Max Planck. This hominid that was discovered in particular was named "X woman", as the sex of the creature found has not yet been discovered. Scientists compared the DNA to that of 54 people living today, a Siberian human from about 30,000 years ago, six Neanderthals from about 40,000 years ago, and a modern pygmy chimpanzee and common chimp. Of course, they had their differences. “That number of differences is good evidence for a new hominid because simple variation can’t account for it,” states Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen. Next is to extract and examine nuclear DNA which is needed to determine the sex of X woman. but the classification could be wrong, due to interbreeding between species. "...there are massive genetic differences between X woman and both Neanderthals and modern humans,” states Pääbo. Due to this, there may be some species in the hominid family that aren't hominids, due to interbreeding.