Mick Hartley

A third hominin co-existing alongside ourselves and the Neanderthals? Here's the BBC report:

Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave.

The extinct "hominin" (human-like creature) lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago.

An international team has sequenced genetic material from the fossil showing that it is distinct from that of Neanderthals and modern humans.

Details of the find, dubbed "X-woman", have been published in Nature journal.

But for the larger picture – and a note of caution – it's worth reading Carl Zimmer. It's….complicated. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks, cited by Zimmer, argues that it's too soon to tell, and that nothing about the mitochondrial DNA sequence that forms the basis of the paper in Nature requires there to have been an undiscovered hominin species.

So we sit back and watch the experts argue it out, as with the recent Homo Floresiensis.