[Rockhounds] Hominids nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago

[Paul]

Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago
A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests
that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.
Anna Ikarashi, Nature News, August 31, 2023
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02712-4

Humanity’s Ancestors Nearly Died Out, Genetic Study Suggests
The population crashed following climate change about 930,000
years ago, scientists concluded. Other experts aren’t convinced
by the analysis. Carl Zimmer, New York Times, August 31, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/science/human-survival-bottleneck.html

The PDF of the preprint of the paper is at:

Hu, W., Hao, Z., Du, P., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Pan,
Y.H. and Li, H., 2021. Genomic inference of a human
super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition. bioRxiv, pp.2021-05.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.16.444351v3.abstract

The paywalled paper is at:

Hu, W., Hao, Z., Du, P., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Pan,
Y.H. and Li, H., 2021. Genomic inference of a human
super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition.
Science, 381(6661), pp. 979-984.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

Yours,

Paul H.