90,000-year-old ancient teenager is the first known person with parents of two different species

PBS News: A new ancient DNA study published in Nature Wednesday reports the first known person to have had parents of two different species. The studied remains belonged to a girl who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) lived throughout Europe and Western Asia until around 30,000 years ago. This species lived in several different ecological zones, survived three glacial periods, and were excellent hunters and tool-makers.
Denisovans (Homo sapiens denisova), on the other hand, we know very little about. Thus far they have only been found in Denisova Cave in Sibera as tiny bone fragments. We don’t yet know what they looked like – nor exactly what they were capable of.Neanderthal, Denisovans, and modern humans all shared a common ancestor more than 400,000 years ago.
Found in Denisova Cave, this child — known as “Denisova 11” — was at least 13 years of age at the time of her death. Analysis of a piece of her bone found that the girl died more than 50,000 years ago.This discovery occurred through ancient DNA analysis, whereby a small piece of the teenager’s bone was pulverised, the DNA extracted, and then sequenced. The sequence was then compared to previously analysed samples from Neanderthals, modern humans, and Denisovans. Her genetic traits could only be explained if her mother was a Neanderthal and her father was a Denisovan.