Human Promiscuity Reaches Back to the Beginnings

Anatomically Modern Humans Interbred With More Archaic Hominin Forms While in Africa

I covered the recent findings that modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) almost certainly interbred with the Neandertal Man in Europe and Asia, resulting in a contribution of Neandertal genes, possibly including red hair, to our common genetic make up. A new study suggests that modern man was also interbreeding with other archaic humans in Africa, contributing other genes:

"We found evidence for hybridization between modern humans and archaic forms in Africa. It looks like our lineage has always exchanged genes with their more morphologically diverged neighbors," said Hammer, who also holds appointments in the UA's department ofecology and evolutionary biology, the school of anthropology, the BIO5 Institute and the Arizona Cancer Center.
...
"We are talking about something that happened between 20,000 and 60,000 years ago -- not that long ago in the scheme of things,"
...
Hammer said that even though the archaic DNA sequences account for only two or three percent of what is found in modern humans, that doesn't mean the interbreeding wasn't more extensive.

So, that make humans the horny ape?  As Joel said this weekend, "A sailor would screw a snake, if it would hold still".   But really, it's difficult to imagine how the resulting hybrid would be retained in the modern humans community and be preserved genetically, unless it was the modern human woman being impregnated by the archaic human, and bringing the hybrid offspring back into the modern human community:

OK, so the pterodactyl is all wrong, and most likely the archaic human would at least have a human foot, but you get the idea...