Two Neanderthals present at the same cave site 10 millennia apart were distant relatives, a tiny 110,000-year-old bone fragment from the Altai Mountains in Siberia reveals. The fragment has also produced the fourth full genome of a Neanderthal to date, shedding light on how small and isolated Neanderthals were long before they disappeared around 40,000 years ago.
Researchers found the bone fragment in Denisova Cave, which both Neanderthals and Denisovans lived in off and on for nearly 300,000 years. In a study published Monday (March 23) in the journal PNAS, the researchers compared the genome of the 110,000-year-old Neanderthal male (called D17) with three other complete Neanderthal genomes to better understand Neanderthals' population structure.
