Evidence of human and Neanderthal interbreeding in Europe finally found
Analysis of bones found in Romania offer evidence of human and Neanderthal interbreeding in Europe
—DNA testing of a human mandible fossil found in Romania has revealed a genome with 4.8 to 11.3 percent Neanderthal DNA—its original owner died approximately 40,000 years ago, Palaeogenomicist Qiaomei Fu reported to audience members at a Biology of Genomes meeting in New York last week. She noted also that she and her research team found long Neanderthal sequences. The high percentage suggests, she added, that the human had a Neanderthal in its family tree going back just four to six generations. The finding by the team provides strong evidence that humans and Neanderthals continued breeding in Europe, long after their initial co-mingling in the Middle East (after humans began migrating out of Africa.)
This latest finding, along with the bone found in Siberia and others in Europe has eroded the belief that human interbreeding with Neanderthals occurred only in the Middle East. It now seems possible that humans and Neanderthals were living in the same geographic areas over the course of five thousand years, which would of course explain why their DNA appears in every person not directly descended from people in Africa, on the planet. What is still a mystery, though, is what happened to the Neanderthal? Why did they disappear even as humans continued on? Eerily, this new evidence suggests that the two were interbreeding very nearly right up to the time when the Neanderthals ceased to exist.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-analysis-bones-romania-evidence-human.html#jCp
