How the rich variety of neurons in the nervous system arises from neural stem cells is not well understood. Using single-cell RNA-sequencing and in vivo confirmation, we uncover previously unrecognized neural stem and progenitor cell diversity within the fetal mouse and human neocortex, including multiple types of radial glia and intermediate progenitors. We also observed that transcriptional priming underlies the diversification of a subset of ventricular radial glial cells in both species; genetic fate mapping confirms that the primed radial glial cells generate specific types of basal progenitors and neurons. The different precursor lineages therefore diversify streams of cell production in the developing murine and human neocortex. These data show that transcriptional priming is likely a conserved mechanism of mammalian neural precursor lineage specialization.
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