ABOVE: A Neanderthal skull
WIKIMEDIA, AQUILAGIB
Neanderthals, modern humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, have been extinct for thousands of years. But due to interbreeding between the two groups around 55,000 years ago, remnants of our long-lost kin remain in the genetic material of individuals alive today. Scientists have previously suggested Neanderthal DNA was gradually removed from modern human genomes during the last 45,000 years. But a new study, published last week in PNAS, reports that Neanderthal ancestry in Europe likely experienced a quick purge from modern humans’ genomes but then held steady since then.
Neanderthal DNA makes up approximately 2 percent of the genomes of present-day people of non-African descent (researchers believe that Neanderthals intermingled with modern humans after they emerged from Africa). Several studies suggest that Neanderthals may have harbored sequences that were deleterious for modern humans and therefore were expunged from the DNA of our ancestors. For example, scientists discovered ...
