![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() An international research team, including scientists from NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), compared the Neanderthal DNA to samples from 5 present-day humans from China, France, Papua New Guinea, southern Africa and western Africa, as well as to chimpanzee DNA. The bones were discovered at Vindija Cave in Croatia. Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, extracted DNA from the bones of 3 female Neanderthals who lived some 40,000 years ago in Europe. Approximately 30,000 years ago, they disappeared.Ī research team led by Dr. Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia, as far east as southern Siberia and as far south as the Middle East. Neanderthals migrated north into Eurasia, where they became geographically isolated and evolved independently from the line that became modern humans in Africa. The fossil record suggests that they diverged from the primate line that led to present-day humans, Homo sapiens, about 400,000 years ago in Africa. Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, are the most recent extinct relative of modern humans. ![]() The analysis provides the first genome-wide look at the similarities and differences of the closest evolutionary relative to humans. Researchers have produced the first whole-genome sequence of the Neanderthal genome. Frank Vinken, courtesy of Max Planck Society. Svante Pääbo holding the skull of a Neanderthal. ![]()
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