I hadn't considered that Reich and Patterson might have deserved recognition. I think a case could possibly be made for that, especially if the prize-winning work had been defined more broadly as ancient DNA research in general rather than sequencing archaic hominins and identifying introgression into modern humans more specifically. Reich and Patterson were after all heavily involved in the analysis identifying gene flow from Neanderthals into modern non-Africans. But Reich's and Patterson's (very successful and important) careers have focused on more recent, within-sapiens population history, and I think their role in archaic hominin work was less "irreplaceable" than Paabo's. There are plenty of very important archaic hominin papers from Paabo and collaborators which did not involve Reich and Patterson at all: the earliest Neanderthal mtDNA and autosomal sequences, Denisovan mtDNA (which came out before the autosomal paper), much of the biochemically focused work on gene expression differences between species and so on, Sima de los Huesos... Reich and Patterson also came into the picture quite a bit after Paabo initiated the whole ancient DNA field - I think about 10 years later. So, even though I would have for personal reasons preferred that Reich and Patterson be recognised too, I think Paabo's contributions in the more narrowly defined field of archaic hominin research are very clearly much more comprehensive and vital than theirs.