source Yahoo News
By Will Dunham
Mon Oct 1, 2007
Neanderthals *images
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Neanderthals, the stocky kin of
modern humans, were far more widespread geographically than
previously thought, with some trekking into southern Siberia
before vanishing about 30,000 years ago, scientists said on
Monday.
Researchers led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute
for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that
Neanderthals spread 1,250 miles further east than scientists
had commonly believed.
The scientists used genetic tests to determine that three
fragmentary bones previously found in the Altai region of
southern Siberia were indeed those of a Neanderthal. They also
confirmed that a child's skeletal remains from Teshik-Tash in
the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan were from a Neanderthal.
Scientists previously had established that Neanderthals
lived in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia before their
disappearance, perhaps after some type of competition with
modern humans who had migrated out of Africa.
"Intriguingly, their presence in southern Siberia raises
the possibility that they may have been present even farther to
the east, in Mongolia and China," the researchers wrote in the
journal Nature.
Since the discovery in the 19th century of Neanderthal
remains in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany,
scientists have struggled to understand just who were these
stockily built archaic humans and why did they die off.
Scientists also are aiming to clarify the evolutionary
relationship between modern humans, who left Africa and quickly
spread around the world starting roughly 100,000 years ago, and
Neanderthals.
"They are our closest relatives," Paabo said in a telephone
interview. "If you saw one in the street, she or he would
strike you as very robust and muscular, with a big brow ridge
and bigger musculature. But they had, for example, just as big
a brain as we have."
Traits typical of Neanderthals appear in remains dating
from 400,000 years ago, and Neanderthals disappeared about
30,000 years ago, the researchers said.
Paabo, a leader in the field of ancient DNA research, also
is instrumental in an effort launched last year to complete a
first draft of the Neanderthal genome.
The fact that their geographic range was even bigger than
previously thought makes their disappearance all the more
mysterious, Paabo said.
source Yahoo News
HemuZ Planetary
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