Scientists: Inbreeding Common in Early Humans
Conclusion drawn from deformed skull
Inbreeding may have been a common practice among early human ancestors, fossils show.
The evidence comes from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull unearthed at a site called Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin of northern China. The skull's owner appears to have had a now-rare congenital deformity that probably arose throughinbreeding, researchers report today (March 18) in the journal PLOS ONE.
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