Could the lives of the eight billion people currently on Earth have depended on the resilience of just 1,280 human ancestors who very nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago?The Chinese-led team of researchers developed a model to crunch the numbers, which found that the population of breeding human ancestors shrank to about 1,280 around 930,000 years ago.
- 99 percent of ancestors wiped out?
The population of early humans dwindled to around 1,280 individuals during a time of dramatic climate change and remained that small for about 117,000 years, the study said.
A study published on Thursday claims that human ancestors teetered on the brink of extinction over 900,000 years ago. Based on a new method of analysis, scientists found that our ancestors survived in a group of less than 1,300 individuals. While most people nowadays worry about the overpopulation of planet Earth, which is currently hosting more than 8 billion individuals, our ancestors were facing a very different problem.Using a new technique to analyse genetic data, an international group of
An ancestral human species faced a startling population bottleneck and teetered on the brink of extinction around 800,000 years ago, according to new research.