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For this study, the researchers collected data on craniofacial morphology from the published literature. This ultimately resulted in a data set including 13 Neandertals, 233 prehistoric Homo sapiens, and 83 modern humans.The researchers focused on standard craniofacial measurements, which are reproducible, and used those measurements to assess the size and shape of key facial structures. This then allowed the researchers to do an in-depth analysis to determine whether a given human population was likely to have interbred with Neandertal populations, as well as the extent of that likely interbreeding.

...Before high-throughput sequencing became commonplace, the aDNA field relied on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques to sequence a few specific DNA fragments. Researchers could only extract a very limited amount of DNA information with this technology and had trouble distinguishing genuine aDNA from contaminant DNA.To complement advances in sequencing, aDNA researchers have also developed improved methods of DNA library construction to better reflect the characteristics of aDNA. Among these methods, partial uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG) treatments and single-stranded DNA library construction are two of the most important...The application of aDNA technology goes far beyond the ancient human genome, of course. Paleomolecular...

Using the latest scientific methods, Tom Higham and Katerina Douka from the University of Vienna want to solve a great mystery of human evolution: Why are we the only humans left? Higham and Douka were the first ones to find a first-generation offspring of two different types of human. They continuously publish new results in high impact journals, most recently in Science Advances.Our ancient cousins are more present in modern human DNA than we thought: Modern humans possess a small proportion of genes from archaic groups like Neanderthals. Every person having a European or Asian background has an average of...

Cueva de Ardales is a hugely important Paleolithic site in Malaga, Spain, owing to its rich inventory of rock art. According to new research, Neanderthals entered this cave in the Middle Paleolithic, over 65,000 years ago and left traces of symbolic practices on the cave walls; thereafter the cave was repeatedly visited by Homo sapiens all the way to the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic period.Cueva de Ardales is the most outstanding cave with Paleolithic rock art in southern Iberia.The cave is located near the village of Ardales, in a mountain know as Cerro de la Calinoria, at 565 m above sea level...

Deep in the forests of Laos, in a cave in the Annamite Mountains, lay a single child's tooth. That tooth – an unassuming molar - could be from a mysterious species of human we know little about, and of which few remains are known to exist. "Analyses of the internal structure of the molar in tandem with palaeoproteomic analyses of the enamel indicate that the tooth derives from a young, likely female, Homo individual," researchers write in a new study. The tooth, from the Tam Ngu Hao 2 cave, "most likely represents a Denisovan", the researchers say. Denisovans are an...

Bacho Kiro Cave. (Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images) Last year, a genetic analysis of bone fragments representing our earliest known presence in Europe raised a few questions over the steps modern humans took to conquer every corner of the modern world. Whoever the remains belonged to, their family background was more entwined with the East Asian populations of their day than with today's Europeans, hinting at a far more convoluted migration for our species than previously thought. Now, researchers from the Universities of Padova and Bologna in Italy have proposed what they think might be the simplest explanation for the...

We’re all human: Scientists create world’s biggest family tree linking 27 million people OXFORD, United Kingdom — The world’s biggest family tree linking around 27 million people has been created by scientists. The genetic model combines thousands of modern and prehistoric genomes, providing new insight into key events in human history. The breakthrough is a major step towards mapping the entirety of human relationships, with a single lineage that traces the ancestry of all people on Earth. The family tree also has widespread implications for medical research, identifying genetic predictors of disease. “We have basically built a huge family tree,...

The discovery by researchers led from the University of Toulouse–Jean Jaurès was made in the 'Grotte Mandrin', 1.5 miles south of Malataverne, in the Rhône Valley.Previously, the oldest proven examples of modern human settlements in Europe were dated back to 45,000–43,000 years ago — 10,000 years earlier.Furthermore, the Mandrin cave also provides the first clear example of a site that was alternately occupied by Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens).

Footprints on the Ciampate del Diavolo. (edmondo gnerre/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0) ============================================================================================= According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the "Ciampate del Diavolo"' or "Devil's Trail" – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to be. The mysterious footprints are well known to those living near Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano in southern Italy that hasn't erupted in tens of thousands of years. Since 2001, researchers have...

Another sort of human once lived in the Altai Mountains as well... the Neanderthals. In a study titled “Neanderthals and the cult of the Sun Bird,” published this month in Quaternary Science Reviews, a team of anthropologists reveals that Neanderthals trapped and hunted golden eagles at least 130,000 years ago. Arguably, this means that Neanderthals were the first humans to practice catching these eagles with seven-foot wingspans, a behavior that the researchers think modern humans later learned from Neanderthals.After combing through previous research on sites where Neanderthals lived, the four-person team — three of which are a family of scientists...

A 125,000-year-old site in Germany known as Neumark-Nord reveals the earliest evidence of one of our hominin relatives, Neanderthals, leaving a lasting mark on their landscape. Located about 22 miles east of Leipzig, Neumark-Nord was dotted with small lakes during an era 130,000 to 115,000 years ago when glaciers had retreated from Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests Neanderthals, who hunted and gathered, moved into the area to capitalize on the milder climate during that time, and altered their landscape through increased use. These hominins hunted and butchered animals, produced tools, collected firewood and built campfires in the Neumark-Nord region for about...

According to a statement released by the University of Kent, Neanderthal infants may have developed faster than modern human babies, based upon the study of a 120,000-year-old Neanderthal milk tooth discovered in what is now Croatia by an international team of researchers led by Patrick Mahoney of the University of Kent. The enamel that covers baby teeth has lines demarcating enamel produced before and after birth, and the space between the lines indicates how much enamel was grown in a single day, according to prior research. Analysis of the lines in this tooth indicates that the tooth erupted from the...

In 2010, scientists unearthed an ivory pendant from an abandoned Polish cave. Punctured with patterns reminiscent of moon cycles and mathematics, the artifact's origins eluded archaeologists -- until now. An international team of researchers just declared the relic to be 41,500 years old. That makes it the earliest piece of ornate jewelry ever found in Eurasia, and a wonderful reminder that art is timeless. Images and details of the discovery were published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. But beyond its aesthetic value, this ancient pendant also marks the first proof of post-Neanderthal civilization in the Polish region...

...Neanderthals in Europe were one of the last hominin species to succumb, dying out around 39,000 years ago. However, recent studies – outlined at a meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution earlier this year – have shown that this takeover by Homo sapiens was not straightforward. On several occasions, groups of early settlers perished as they moved into the continent... ...In one study, international researchers re-examined a partial skull and skeleton of a woman found in the Zlatý Kůň cave in the Czech Republic. Originally thought to have been 15,000 years old, this new analysis...

Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia (Cheburgenator/ CC-BY-SA-4.0/Wikimedia Commons) =============================================================================== Nobody knows who she was, just that she was different: a teenage girl from over 50,000 years ago of such strange uniqueness she looked to be a 'hybrid' ancestor to modern humans that scientists had never seen before. Only recently, researchers have uncovered evidence she wasn't alone. In a 2019 study analysing the complex mess of humanity's prehistory, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to identify an unknown human ancestor species that modern humans encountered – and shared dalliances with – on the long trek out of Africa millennia ago. "About 80,000...

Artist rendering of H. bodoensis. (Ettore Mazza) Scientists have named a new species that may have been the direct ancestor of modern humans. The newly proposed species, Homo bodoensis – which lived more than half a million years ago in Africa – may help to untangle how human lineages moved and interacted across the globe. Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the only surviving human lineage, other human species once roamed Earth. For example, scientists recently discovered that the Indonesian island Flores was once home to the extinct species Homo floresiensis, often known as "the hobbit" for its miniature body....

"Given that the sand sealing the chamber was [40,000] years old, and that the chamber was therefore older, it must have been Neanderthals," who lived in Eurasia from about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago and were likely using the cave, Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar National Museum, told Live Science in an email.While Finlayson's team was studying the cave last month, they discovered the hollow area. After climbing through it, they found it is 43 feet (13 meters) in length, with stalactites hanging like eerie icicles from the chamber ceiling.Along the surface of the cave chamber, the researchers found...

Neanderthals living in the Swabian Jura more than 45,000 years ago used sophisticated techniques with many different production strategies to make stone tools. The Heidenschmiede site has yielded many stone tools and by-products of the toolmaking process.The researchers refitted the pieces made from stone cores and were thereby able to show the techniques – requiring planning and forethought – used in the process...The Heidenschmiede, a rock shelter near Heidenheim in southern Germany, was discovered and excavated in 1928 by amateur archaeologist Hermann Mohn, who recognized it as an important site for stone and bone worked by early humans...The bone and...

As far as Lower Paleolithic archaeology goes, this is quite the haul: Experts have uncovered a record 98 elephant-bone tools at a site dating back some 400,000 years. This discovery could change our thinking on how some of the early humans – such as Neanderthals – fashioned implements like these. The bones were collected from a place called Castel di Guido, close to modern-day Rome. In the dim and distant past, it was a popular watering hole for the now-extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and it looks as though a substantial number of the animals died there too. This newly...

The mysterious Denisovans were only formally identified about a decade ago, when a single finger bone unearthed from a cave in Siberia clued scientists in to the ancient existence of a kind of archaic hominin we'd never before seen.But that's only one side of the story. The truth is, modern humans had in fact already encountered Denisovans a long time before this. We crossed paths with them an eternity ago.So far back, in fact, that we forgot about them entirely. Especially as they – and other archaic humans, such as the Neanderthals – faded into the unliving past, and Homo...