Viviane Slon is a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.^[1][2] She identified that a teenage girl born 90,000 years ago had both Neanderthal and Denisovan parents. She was selected as one of Nature's 10 in 2018.^[3]

Early life and education

Slon completed her doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.^[4] She won the 2017 Dan David Prize.^[5] She worked at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University on the earliest human fossils outside Africa.^[6][7] She studied the Qafzeh 9 Skull, looking at developmental malocclusions.^[8]

Research and career

Denisova Cave in 2008

In 2018 Slon was appointed a postdoctoral researcher working on neanderthals at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.^[9] She develops techniques to remove hominin DNA from sediments.^[10][11][12] Her doctoral supervisor Svante Pääbo decoded the Denisovan gene.^[13][14] Slon visited the Denisova Cave during a symposium, where over one thousand bones are excavated a year.^[13]

As her first project, Slon reported the DNA from the tooth of the fourth Denisova individual ever found on earth.^[15][16] She also co-led a team that found Denisovan DNA in excavated dirt as an alternative to finding rare hominin bones.^[3]

In 2018, Slon and her colleagues published the genome of Denny, a hybrid hominin.^[17] DNA was extracted from a hominin bone found in a Middle Pleistocene layer.^[13][18][19] Using genetic analysis and radiocarbon dating, the hominin was identified as a girl born more than 50,000 years ago to a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.^[13][20][21] The work was covered in BBC News, National Geographic, EurekAlert!, The Atlantic and Archaeology magazine.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27]}

Slon was selected as one of Nature's 10 in 2018.^[3]

References