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Neanderthal Hand Found in a Spanish Cave Still Holds Its DNA After 46,000 Years

Neanderthals left plenty of traces in the western Pyrenees, the mountain range that separates Spain from France. Stone tools, butchered animal bones, the leftovers of their camps. What nobody had ever found in Navarre, the region of northern Spain whose capital is Pamplona, was a single bone of the people themselves. On Monday that changed, […]

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A Neanderthal’s Shoulder Blade from Shanidar Cave May Bear Evidence of the Oldest Known Fatal Spear Wound

The shoulder blade is such a wide and flat bone that in some areas it becomes almost translucent when held up to the light. That is why it is rare to find it whole, even in modern burials, and why it so surprised archaeologists from the University of Cambridge that from Shanidar Cave, in Iraqi […]

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Neanderthals Returned to This Spanish Cave Every Year for Generations β€” Long Before Homo Sapiens Ever Set Foot Inside

Deep inside Ojo GuareΓ±a, one of the largest cave systems in Europe, in the northern Spanish province of Burgos, archaeologists have spent eleven consecutive summers digging through a single Neanderthal layer. This year’s season, which wrapped up in late August 2026, pushed the excavated area of that layer β€” known as level 4D β€” to […]

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Homo antecessor Had Surprisingly Modern Skull, New Fossils Suggest

An artist’s rendering of a Homo antecessor individual known as the Girl of Gran Dolina. Image credit: Tom BjΓΆrklund.

A new analysis of three skull fragments unearthed at the Gran Dolina cave site in Spain indicates that Homo antecessor had bone thickness closer to that of Neanderthals and modern people than to more archaic hominins.

The post Homo antecessor Had Surprisingly Modern Skull, New Fossils Suggest appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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The Neanderthals of a Cave in Northern Spain Were Already Making and Reusing Bone Tools in a Standardized and Planned Way

A team of researchers from the University of Burgos and the Atapuerca Foundation has published the first detailed analysis of the bone retouchers found in the Valdegoba cave, in the municipality of HuΓ©rmeces (Burgos). This site, occupied by Neanderthals during the Middle Paleolithic, has yielded 38 bone fragments that were used as tools to retouch […]

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Neanderthal Gene Still Shapes Muscle and Jaws in Some Living Humans

Velazquez-Arcelay et al. found that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be early risers, the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to bed earlier. Image credit: Holger Neumann / Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthals vanished roughly 42,000 years ago, but a piece of their biology appears to be quietly at work in some people today, according to a new study led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The post Neanderthal Gene Still Shapes Muscle and Jaws in Some Living Humans appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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Scientists Find Traces of Two Unknown Archaic Hominins in Human DNA

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious β€˜ghost’ lineages: one in Africa more than 50,000 years ago, another in Eurasia over 1.7 million years ago.

The post Scientists Find Traces of Two Unknown Archaic Hominins in Human DNA appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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Stone Tools from Armenian Cave Reveal Split Strategy for Survival 50,000 Years Ago

A look at Ararat-1 Cave from the bottom of the Ararat Depression. Image credit: Ariel Malinsky Buller.

Ararat-1, a modest limestone cave that lies at an elevation of 1,034 m on the eastern flanks of the Ararat Depression in central Armenia, has yielded a striking puzzle about how Middle Paleolithic humans moved across their landscape.

The post Stone Tools from Armenian Cave Reveal Split Strategy for Survival 50,000 Years Ago appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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Ancient Turkish Cave Reveals Neanderthals and Homo sapiens Shared Same Way of Life

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

ÜçağızlΔ± II Cave on TΓΌrkiye’s Mediterranean coast has yielded a rare and detailed record of two Homo species living the same way of life, one after the other, over more than 20,000 years, offering new evidence that the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans in the region was far more culturally seamless than previously understood.

The post Ancient Turkish Cave Reveals Neanderthals and Homo sapiens Shared Same Way of Life appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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