National Public Radio interviewed Sriram Sankararaman, UCLA assistant professor of computer science, computational medicine and human genetics, about a new study he led on finding “ghost” DNA of an archaic hominin in the genomes of four populations in West Africa.

“We don’t have a clear identity for this archaic group,” Sankararaman said. “That’s why we use the term ‘ghost.’ It doesn’t seem to be particularly closely related to the groups from which we have genome sequences from.”

Authored by Sankararaman and graduate student Arun Durvasula, the paper was published in Science Advances. The research finding was covered by global media outlets, including CNN, BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters and Newsweek. It was also highlighted in major science publications such as Science News, The Scientist and New Scientist.