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.

See “Neanderthal-Human Interbreeding Got an Early Start

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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