[AndyTheBear]

"Our theory maintains that there is no evolutionary connection between Neanderthals and modern humans," states Ross. "If this is the case, then Neanderthals should prove to be genetically distinct from modern humans-precisely why this new research on the nuclear DNA of Neanderthals is so vitally important."

What does he mean by "no evolutionary connection"? Does he mean that we could not have had a common ancestor? It is difficult to make sense of this. Evolutionary models suggest all species had a common ancestor, and certainly many of them are more dissimilar to us then the Neanderthals.

[AndyTheBear]

"My sense is that when the Neanderthal genome is analyzed it will show, once and for all, that Neanderthals did not evolve into modern humans," predicts Rana.

I think this might be a straw man. Isn't the common evolutionary speculation that we merely had common ancestors with them?

[David Allen]

My understanding is that the line which produced modern humans and the line which produced Neanderthal are said to have split many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years prior to the emergence of Neanderthal.

The evidence has suggested for several years that there is no Neanderthal DNA found in modern humans. This suggests that if there was breeding between Neanderthal and Humans, infertile hybrids resulted, if anything.