Neanderthal Bone Highlights Human Inter-breeding
A tiny toebone from a Neanderthal woman who lived around 50,000 years ago has shown that several branches of early humans interbred.
Via AFP:
A tiny toebone from a Neanderthal woman who lived around 50,000 years ago has shown that several branches of early humans interbred before a single group, Homo sapiens, rose to dominate.
The bone has provided the final piece to a project, launched in 2006 by European evolutionary anthropologist Svante Paabo, to use ancient DNA to trace the human odyssey.
In a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, a team reports that the bone adds hugely to genetic knowledge of our cousins, the Neanderthals, who died out around 30,000 years ago.
The scientists compared the genome against...