Only 1,000 humans survived. 900,000 years ago, we nearly vanished. Our ancestors faced extinction, but somehow, we made it. This is the forgotten story hidden in your DNA.
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Sources
- Hoelzel et al. (2024). Post-bottleneck recovery in elephant seals. Nat Ecol Evol.
- Rogers & Slatkin (2017). Wrangel Island mammoths. PLOS Genetics.
- Wangjie et al. (2023). Human bottleneck during Early-Mid Pleistocene. Science.
- Yehudai et al. (2021). Glacial cyclicity triggers. PNAS.
- Ambrose (1998). Volcanic winter & bottlenecks. J Hum Evol.
- Yost et al. (2018). Minimal Toba effect. J Hum Evol.
- Karmin et al. (2015). Y chromosome bottleneck. Genome Res.
- Lippold et al. (2014). mtDNA and Y-chromosome diversity. Investig Genet.
- Briggs et al. (2009). Neanderthal mtDNA. Science.
- Ríos et al. (2019). Inbreeding in Neanderthals. Sci Rep.
- Urciuoli et al. (2025). Neanderthal bottlenecks via semicircular canals. Nat Commun.
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