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Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor's Fellow, La Trobe University

Modern human DNA contains bits from all over the Neanderthal genome – except the Y chromosome. What happened?

Untitled Tamer A Soliman / Shutterstock

Neanderthals, the closest cousins of modern humans, lived in parts of Europe and Asia until their extinction some 30,000 years ago.

Genetic studies are revealing ever more about the links between modern humans and these long-gone relatives – most recently that a rush of interbreeding between our species occurred in a relatively short burst of time around 47,000 years ago. But one mystery still remains.

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