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Eighty years ago, a Neanderthal femur dating back more than 120,000 years was recovered from a Southwestern Germany cave. Now, the ancient bone reveals new clues about the bedfellows of human ancestors.

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Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Southwestern Germany, where an ancient, 124,000-year-old hominin femur was excavated in 1937

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.

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