The absence of a direct modern descendant population of the Ancient North Siberians is one of the most intriguing aspects of the 2019 study, and it requires careful explanation to avoid misunderstanding.

When scientists say that the Ancient North Siberians have no clearly identified modern descendant population, they are not saying that the genes of these Ice Age Siberians no longer exist anywhere in the modern human genome.

Genetic ancestry does not disappear — it gets diluted, mixed, redistributed.

The specific genetic variants that characterized the Ancient North Siberians are still present in modern human populations.

They have just been mixed into the genetic mosaic of later populations to the point where no modern group is primarily or predominantly ANS in their ancestry.