It’s well known that all humans alive today can be traced back to a common ancestor but a study may have found where that ancestor originates. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute mapped the entirety of genetic relationships among humans to create the largest human family tree ever. By combining modern and ancient human genomes data from eight different databases, the researchers were able to create a massive family tree. This allowed them to see how a person’s genetic sequence relates to another using the points of the genome. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Essentially, we are reconstructing the genomes of our ancestors and using them to form a vast network of relationships,” Lead author Dr Anthony Wilder Wohns said. “We can then estimate when and where these ancestors lived.” Where they lived? Sudan, Africa. Dr Wohns told Reuters, "The very earliest ancestors we identify trace back in time to a geographic location that is in modern Sudan. “These ancestors lived up to and over 1 million years ago—which is much older than current estimates for the age of Homo sapiens—250,000 to 300,000 years ago. So bits of our genome have been inherited from individuals who we wouldn’t recognize as modern humans," Dr Wohns said. Researchers used 3,609 individual genome sequences from 215 populations and samples that ranged from 1,000s to over 100,000 years. By using a new method to compile the data, algorithms were able to predict where common ancestors were in evolutionary trees to explain some patterns of genetic variation. The results were a network of almost 27 million ancestors. “The power of our approach is that it makes very few assumptions about the underlying data and can also include both modern and ancient DNA samples,” Dr Wohns says. Not only does the data help us understand human geology better but the new method could help in other research, like medicine. “The underlying method could have widespread applications in medical research, for instance identifying genetic predictors of disease risk," Dr Wohns added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Two environmental groups said Thursday they were suing the Norwegian state for violating the country's human rights commitments and constitution by planning new oil and...

The Moon has been a subject of awe and fascination for millennia, with its shape-shifting powers and enigmatic dark side. And though it’s the one celestial body on which man has taken (small) steps, we still have big leaps to go in understanding its potential and uncovering its secrets. However, one hidden feature of the Moon has been unearthed by scientists and it’s very, very big, and very, very heavy. Buried beneath its South Pole-Aitken basin – one of the largest preserved craters in the Solar System – is a structure which weighs at least 2.18 billion kilogrammes and measures more than 300km (186 miles) in depth and 2,000km (1,243 miles) in length. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The researchers who made the discovery, all based in the US, posited that the “anomaly” could be made out of metal from the core of an asteroid or oxides from the crystallisation of a magma ocean. "One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon's mantle,” lead author Peter B. James, from Houston’s Baylor University, said in a statement shared with IFLScience. Illustrating just how gigantic this thing is, he went on: "Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.” The groundbreaking finding was made thanks to NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which measures changes in the Moon’s gravitational field. Data collected by GRAIL can then be used to study the internal composition of our cratered companion. The South Pole-Aitken Basin has been at the centre of numerous investigations because of just how unique it is. The region offers clues both on the interior composition of our closest satellite and its history, and who knows what other mysteries it holds... Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The government suffers a setback as judges said Rwanda is not a safe third country.

The Court of Appeal has ruled the government's Rwanda policy is unlawful.

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The Biden administration announced new actions Thursday to help prevent and reduce veteran homelessness across the country, including $3.1 billion in funding to support efforts to quickly rehouse homeless Americans.

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the violent clashes and unrest over the police killing of a teenager, which

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had dropped a central element of the bitterly contested judicial overhaul plans