This mysterious relative was probably from a third branch of the hominid family tree that produced
Neandertals and Denisovans, a distant cousin of
Neandertals.
On the other hand, the culture-shock experienced by
neandertals transported to the late twentieth century would be violent indeed.
Neandertals may not have been very expressive or personable.
So
Neandertals probably pooped out faster, since their tendons required more energy.
With this data in hand, the authors convincingly demonstrate that
Neandertals are more genetically similar to present-day humans in Eurasia than they are to present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa - with the expectation being that if there had been no interbreeding, all human populations would be equally related to
Neandertal.
"Direct high-throughput 454 Sequencing of a DNA extract from a
Neandertal fossil has thus far yielded a significant portion of the
Neandertal genome, including over one million base pairs of hominoid nuclear DNA sequences, giving us the confidence to commence with the sequencing of the entire
Neandertal genome," explained Svante Paabo, Ph.D., Director of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute and lead author of the Nature article.
They argue that many of the
Neandertal features are also seen in some early modern Europeans who came later, such as the ones found at Miadec, a site in Moravia (Czech Republic), and that this is evidence of extensive interbreeding.
Visual argument is, for example, evident in a longstanding debate within paleoanthropology over the nature of
Neandertals. As a whole, the debate concerns the detailed interpretation of
Neandertal material remains (fossil skeletons, tools, burials, etc.) and what may be inferred from them.