John Hawks

John Hawks

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Denisova Cave

The humanity of a new Denisovan
Identification of the Harbin skull by mtDNA and proteins and what it means to be Homo sapiens.
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John Hawks
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The problem when all the fossils are male
Protein data shows that most known Denisovan teeth come from male individuals, hamstringing attempts to understand the variation of this group.
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John Hawks
The impressive genetic diversity of the last Neanderthals
The new “Thorin” genome from Grotte Mandrin represents a previously-unknown Neanderthal deep history.
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John Hawks
Tracing the signature of African-to-Neandertal gene flow
A new study of African genetic variation yields a more accurate picture of the genetic exchanges between ancient Africans and Neandertals 250,000 years…
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John Hawks
How collagen fingerprinting is changing the way archaeologists understand ancient sites
Katarina Douka and coworkers are identifying the species of ancient bone fragments at a massive scale from Denisova Cave.
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John Hawks
Should we be surprised if Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans didn’t form stable hybrid zones?
A geneticist asks why we don't see more persisting hybrid populations, and I find an answer in the theory of population source-sink dynamics.
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John Hawks
Another Denisovan from Denisova Cave
A review of the 2015 work identifying the Denisova 8 specimen by Susanna Sawyer and coworkers.
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John Hawks
New findings from the Denisova 3 genome at high coverage
Sequencing work by Matthias Meyer and coworkers highlights the demography of ancient Denisovans and genes that may make today's people different from…
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John Hawks
A mysterious mitochondrial sequence from Denisova Cave, Russia
A small fragment of finger bone with a DNA sequence that represents a previously-unknown form of hominin.
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John Hawks
© 2025 John Hawks
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