Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Southwestern Germany, where an ancient, 124,000-year-old hominin femur was excavated in 1937
© PHOTO MUSEUM ULM
In a study published this week (July 4) in Nature Communications, mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal femur, unearthed in 1937 from a Southwestern Germany cave, sheds light on the migration and mating patterns of human ancestors.
124,000-year-old Neanderthal femur
OLEG KUCHAR © PHOTO MUSEUM ULM
See C. Posth et al., “Deeply divergent archaic mitochondrial genome provides lower time boundary for African gene flow into Neanderthals,” Nature Communications, doi:10.1038/ncomms16046, 2017.