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Fossilized feces offer new evidence that Neanderthals ate both meat and plants. Chemical analysis confirmed the oldest-known ancient human fecal matter, according to a study published yesterday (June 25) in PLOS ONE. Previous isotope studies of bones suggested Neanderthals were primarily meat-eaters. Analyses of tartar from their teeth have indicated they may have also eaten plants, although some researchers noted that these plant remains could be traces from the stomach contents of herbivore prey. Stool, however, is "the perfect evidence because you’re sure it was consumed," study author Ainara Sistiaga from the University of La Laguna in Spain told BBC...

Scientists excavating an archaeological site in southern Spain have finally gotten the real poop on Neandertals, finding that the Caveman Diet for these quintessential carnivores included substantial helpings of vegetables. Using the oldest published samples of human fecal matter, archaeologists have found the first direct evidence that Neandertals in Europe cooked and ate plants about 50,000 years ago... ...the team was able to detect the chemical byproducts created by bacteria in the gut in the digestion of cholesterol from meat, as well as sterols and stanols, which are lipids in plants that are similar to cholesterol. The tests revealed that...

IT IS surprising what a little hanky-panky can do. A handful of sexual encounters between humans and Neanderthals made many of us what we are today, affecting both our appearance and our vulnerability to disease. But the genetic legacy left by the Neanderthals also highlights just how different we are from our sister species. [SNIP] ... the adaptation took thousands of years to become universal. A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin...

Full headline: Treasure trove of skulls reveal missing link in human evolution: Facial bones suggest early Neanderthals used their teeth as a 'third hand' The 17 skulls belong to a single population of a fossil hominin species This is the biggest collection of human fossils ever found on one site They shed light on pre-human evolution from around 400,000 years ago Skulls showed Neanderthal features in face and teeth but not elsewhere These features evolved due to eating and perhaps for use as a 'third hand' Study adds to theories that the Neanderthals developed their characteristic looks slowly, and intermittently,...

A new study concludes that humans mated with Neanderthals 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, leaving traces of the Neanderthal genome in some modern humans. This picture shows the reconstruction of a Neanderthal woman at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany, on March 20, 2009. A new study is offering insights into how early humans and Neanderthals were similar and different.

New research has undermined the popular belief that Neanderthals were less intelligent than Homo sapiens, and challenges the widely-held view they were forced into extinction by modern humans. Many experts have suggested humans’ advanced culture and hunting ability caused Neanderthals to disappear from Europe over 30,000 years ago. …

They are often depicted as dim-witted evolutionary losers, but Neanderthals were not driven to extinction by their lack of brains, a new study suggests. Instead, it is more likely that they disappeared 40,000 years ago because of interbreeding and assimilation with our early modern human ancestors, scientists believe. An analysis of archaeological evidence dating back 200,000 years strips away some of the myths surrounding Neanderthals and reveals they were more advanced and sophisticated than has widely been thought. Why did Neanderthals go extinct? It's often thought their lack of intelligent ultimately led to their demise, but new research suggests it...

Researchers Just Dug Up A Half-Million-Year-Old Human Jawbone Tia Ghose, LiveScienceFebruary, 2013 . An ancient hominin jawbone unearthed in a Serbian cave may be more than half a million years old. Scientists have unearthed a jawbone from an ancient human ancestor in a cave in Serbia. The jawbone, which may have come from an ancient Homo erectus or a primitive-looking Neanderthal precursor, is more than 397,000 years old, and possibly more than 525,000 years old. The fossil, described today (Feb. 6) in the journal PLOS ONE, is the oldest hominin fossil found in this region of Europe, and may change...

New York (Reuters) - How can creatures as different in body and mind as present-day humans and their extinct Neanderthal cousins be 99.84 percent identical genetically? Four years after scientists discovered that the two species' genomes differ by a fraction of a percent, geneticists said on Thursday they have an explanation: the cellular equivalent of "on"/"off" switches that determine whether DNA is activated or not. :snip: Calling the work "pioneering," and "a remarkable breakthrough," paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said in an interview that the HOXD gene finding "may help to explain how these ancient...

Big chill killed off the Neanderthals 19:00 21 January 04 It is possibly the longest-running murder mystery of them all. What, or even who, killed humankind's nearest relatives, the Neanderthals who once roamed Europe before dying out almost 30,000 years ago? Suspects have ranged from the climate to humans themselves, and the mystery has deeply divided experts. Now 30 scientists have come together to publish the most definitive answer yet to this enigma. They say Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to survive the increasingly harsh winters. And intriguingly, rather than being Neanderthal killers, the original human settlers...

DNA reveals Neanderthal redheadsNeanderthals’ pigmentation possibly as varied as humans’, scientists say By Steve BradtWith Neanderthals’ surviving bones providing few clues, scientists have long sought to flesh out the appearance of this hominid species. Illustration created by Knut Finstermeier, Neanderthal reconstruction by the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum Mannheim Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals’ pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of...

Neanderthals roamed as far as Siberia 18:00 30 September 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi DNA extracted from skeletal remains has shown that Neanderthals roamed some 2000 kilometres further east than previously thought. Researchers say the genetic sequence of an adolescent Neanderthal found in southern Siberia closely matches that of Neanderthals found in western Europe, suggesting that this close relative of modern humans migrated very long distances. Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues examined skeletal remains found in the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains and dated as between 30,000 and...

Siberian Graveyard's Secrets YEKATERINBURG, Russia In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates - burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before. . Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The cold, dry permafrost preserved the remains, and the copper may have helped prevent oxidation. . The discovery adds...

...archaeologists at the University of York are challenging the traditional view that Neanderthal childhood was, in Hobbesian terms, difficult, nasty, brutish and short, fraught with continual fear and danger of violent death... The research team say there is evidence that Neanderthals cared for their sick and injured children for months and often years. A study of child burials, meanwhile, reveals that the young may have been given particular attention when they died, with generally more elaborate graves than older individuals. Neanderthal groups, believed based on fossil findings to have ranged throughout Europe, Asia Minor and into central Asia, were typically...

'Catastrophic' event at Campi Flegrei 39,000 years ago Volcanic eruption near Naples may have killed Neanderthals Some researchers are suggesting that Neanderthals were driven to extinction by a massive volcanic eruption near Naples. The suggestion is one of the topics under debate this week at a conference at London's British Museum examining what forces led to the destruction of the Neanderthals and what led to the triumph of the homo sapiens. One new theory holds that a gigantic eruption of the volcano in the Campi Flegrei area near Naples 39,000 years ago was catastrophic for the Neanderthals. That was the...

Researchers have securely dated a prehistoric human stone tool industry that is thought to have been used by early modern humans, or possibly late Neanderthals, around the time when early modern humans were beginning to emerge in Europe, arguably sometime between 40,000 to 50,000 years B.P... The Uluzzian, a prehistoric stone tool techno-tradition represented by lithic artifacts unearthed by archaeologists at cave locations primarily in Italy and Greece, has been a central contender as a possible "transitional" industry between the typical stone tool types (the Mousterian) used by late European Neanderthals and those (Aurignacian, Châtelperronian) of the earliest modern human...

LONDON (AP) — They were a British family on a day out — almost a million years ago. Archaeologists announced Friday that they have discovered human footprints in England that are between 800,000 and 1 million years old — the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe.

Disgraced Anthropologist Drinks 40,000-Year-Old Milk by Scott Ott (2005-02-19) -- A disgraced German anthropology professor, who pretended to use carbon dating to establish a link between Neanderthals and modern man, told reporters today that he regularly drinks 40,000-year-old milk and drives a Porsche Carrera made in 736 BC. Frankfurt Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten resigned this week from a 30-year career as one of the world's leading anthropologists, when a panel concluded his carbon dating of human bones was incorrect by thousands of years. The inquiry found that one skull, which Mr. Protsch claimed came from a 27,400-year-old human fossil,...

Early Humans Settled India Before Europe, Study Suggests Brian Vastag for National Geographic News November 14, 2005 Modern humans migrated out of Africa and into India much earlier than once believed, driving older hominids in present-day India to extinction and creating some of the earliest art and architecture, a new study suggests. The research places modern humans in India tens of thousands of years before their arrival in Europe. University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James developed the new theory after analyzing decades' worth of existing fieldwork in India. They outline their research in the journal Current Anthropology....

American Neanderthal? Unearthed Native American Could Help Solve Mystery W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 18 —The baffling 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man, whose skeleton was unearthed in 1996 in Washington state, looks so “European” because he had Neanderthal roots, a scientist said today. The National Park Service said earlier this month it would allow a genetic analysis of the skeleton, which some Native American groups claim as an ancestor and want buried. It has intrigued researchers because the features seem to suggest a more Caucasian than Asian origin. Others say he looks like an Ainu — ...