2012 - Science News: Space, Evolution, Archaeology & Cataclysms

2012 [ News Blog of Survive2012 ]

Monday, 12. June 2006

2012, Monday, 12. June 2006, 15:21
Neanderthal DNA 100K Years Old
Although it is highly impressive that DNA from 100,000 years ago has been extracted from the tooth of a Neanderthal child found in a cave in Belgium - what I find interesting is the following:

The study, reported in Current Biology, suggests our distant cousins were more genetically diverse than once thought...

"The Scladina sequence has revealed that the genetic diversity of Neanderthals has been underestimated," a team led by Dr Catherine Hanni of Ecole Normale Superieur in Lyon, France, wrote in the journal Current Biology.

"Thus, more Neanderthal sequences than the six presently available and longer than 100 bp are needed to fully understand the extent of the past diversity of Neanderthals."

Could it be that due to whatever really drives human evolution was permanently present back in those days, and that all Neanderthals were of their own unique individual strain?

Source:

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last updated: 2008.09.21, 05:13