Genetic testing of a single, 90,000-year-old sliver of bone from an approximately 13-year-old girl has confirmed something researchers had long suspected: It has provided clear evidence of interbreeding between two distinct groups of early humans.

Earlier analysis of the girl’s mitochondrial DNA had shown that her mother was of Neanderthal ancestry. The new research, led by paleogeneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, examined her entire genome. They then compared it to previously sequenced paleogenomes, including those of other ancient humans. The results were unambiguous—the girl’s DNA matched Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to an equal degree. She had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Denisovans were a type of early hominin named after the cave in the Altai Mountains of present-day Russia where their remains were found around a decade ago. “When I first saw the combined Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry, I got worried that I had made a mistake in the lab, and that this was somehow a mix-up of two different bones,” says Max Planck’s Viviane Slon. “It was only after repeating the experiments several times, and consistently seeing the same result, that I convinced myself—and my colleagues—that the girl’s mixed ancestry was real.”

The team’s finding of a direct offspring of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan implies that individuals from the two groups mixed when they had the opportunity to meet. “Taken together with evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans also mixed with ancient modern humans,” says Slon, “this suggests that different groups of humans have always mixed when encountering each other.”

At the vast Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara, German and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a type of ancient funeral parlor. This establishment, the first of its kind ever identified, provided mummification services as well as communal burial chambers for the dead. It has revealed tantalizing new clues to how mummies were made during the Saite-Persian period of the mid-first millennium B.C. The rectangular building, composed of mudbrick and limestone blocks, contained large vats where bodies and linens were prepped for preservation. At the bottom of a 40-foot-deep shaft, the team found an embalming chamber where hundreds of ceramic bowls and cups were stored. Many of these vessels had labels listing specific oils and substances, along with instructions for how they should be used in the mummification process.

From the workshop’s open courtyard, a nearly 100-foot-long tunnel led down to a series of burial chambers that contained dozens of mummies. One stone sarcophagus, belonging to a lady named Tadihor, was surrounded by dozens of protective faience ushabti figurines inscribed with her name. A painted and plastered wooden coffin identified its occupant as the second priest of the mother goddess Mut and a priest of the goddess Niut-shaes, a serpent form of Mut. Placed over the mummy’s head was a rare gilded silver mask, with inlaid calcite, obsidian, and onyx eyes. “Gilded silver masks had deep religious meaning,” says project leader Ramadan B. Hussein of the University of Tubingen. “Egyptian religious texts indicate that the bones of the gods are made of silver and their flesh is made of gold. A mummy mask of silver and gold is a step toward the transformation of the deceased into a god.”

A Greek merchant ship discovered more than a mile under the surface of the Black Sea has been radiocarbon dated to 2,400 years ago, making it the world’s oldest known intact shipwreck. The vessel was located by the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project as they surveyed the seafloor some 50 miles off the coast of Bulgaria with a remote deep-sea camera system.

The 75-foot-long wooden ship remains remarkably well preserved because the Black Sea’s depths are oxygen-free. This has allowed experts to examine elements of ancient ship construction for the first time, including the design of the mast, twin rudders, and rowing benches. “A ship, surviving intact, from the Classical world is something I would never have believed possible,” says Jon Adams of the University of Southampton. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”