Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

Explorers happened upon the bones after squeezing through a fissure high up in the rear wall of the Rising Star cave, 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute…

Bookmark

Earlier this month, scientists working in South Africa made an exciting announcement: They had discovered a new species of human ancestor.

Bookmark

In the movie Sliding Doors (1998), a woman named Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, rushes to catch a train on the London Underground, but just misses it, watching helplessly from the…

Bookmark

Each year, billions of people get infected with viruses–with common ones like influenza and cold viruses, and rarer ones like polio and Ebola. The viruses don’t stay all that long inside…

Bookmark

ADVERTISEMENT

Bookmark

Ancient viruses inherited from Neanderthals have been found in modern human DNA. Scientists are investigating possible links between the “endogenous retroviruses”, which are hard-wired into DNA, and modern diseases such as…

Bookmark

A scientist believes he's close to perfecting the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal - all he needs is a human woman to gestate it.

Bookmark

Fossils and artefacts pulled from the Grotte du Renne cave in central France present anthropologists with a Pleistocene puzzle. Strewn among the remains of prehistoric mammals are the bones of Neanderthals,…

Bookmark

A chorus of smart, modern minds is rising over the hills of anthropology that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe weren't anywhere nearly as dumb, insufferable and unrecognizable as everyone thought all…

Bookmark

As scientists began to build a database of human DNA in the 1990s, it became possible to test these ideas with genes. In his talk, Paabo described how he and his…

Bookmark

"If there has been no spiritual change of kind / Within our species since Cro-Magnon Man . . ." The poet Louis MacNeice was voicing a commonplace that was accepted by…

Bookmark

Mr. James Winters at A Replicated Typo pointed me to a short hypothesis paper, Neanderthal-human Hybrids. This paper argues that selective mating of Neandertal males with females of human populations which had…

Bookmark

Just this year, researchers have estimated that gene flow from Neanderthals to humans occurred between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago (ScienceDaily May, 2010). Researchers have long wondered if Neanderthals were an…

Bookmark

According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated…

Bookmark

The genomes of most modern humans are 1–4% Neanderthal — a result of interbreeding with the close relatives that went extinct 30,000 years ago, according to work by an international group…

Bookmark

Archaic humans such as Neanderthals may be gone but they're not forgotten — at least not in the human genome. A genetic analysis of nearly 2,000 people from around the world…

Bookmark

If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454…

Bookmark

Explorers happened upon the bones after squeezing through a fissure high up in the rear wall of the Rising Star cave, 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute…

Bookmark

Earlier this month, scientists working in South Africa made an exciting announcement: They had discovered a new species of human ancestor.

Bookmark

In August 1856, limestone quarry workers blasting out the entrance to the Feldhofer grotto in the Neander Valley of west-central Germany found a set of skeletal remains.

Bookmark

Each year, billions of people get infected with viruses–with common ones like influenza and cold viruses, and rarer ones like polio and Ebola. The viruses don’t stay all that long inside…

Bookmark

Ancient viruses inherited from Neanderthals have been found in modern human DNA. Scientists are investigating possible links between the “endogenous retroviruses”, which are hard-wired into DNA, and modern diseases such as…

Bookmark

The first draft of the Neanderthal genome, published in 2010, came with some titillating news. It showed that some 50,000 years ago, these ancient hominids interbred with the ancestors of many…

Bookmark

A scientist believes he's close to perfecting the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal - all he needs is a human woman to gestate it.

Bookmark

Fossils and artefacts pulled from the Grotte du Renne cave in central France present anthropologists with a Pleistocene puzzle. Strewn among the remains of prehistoric mammals are the bones of Neanderthals,…

Bookmark

A chorus of smart, modern minds is rising over the hills of anthropology that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe weren't anywhere nearly as dumb, insufferable and unrecognizable as everyone thought all…

Bookmark

The question of what defines the human has, of course, been kicking around since Socrates, and probably a lot longer. If it has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, then this, Pääbo…

Bookmark

As scientists began to build a database of human DNA in the 1990s, it became possible to test these ideas with genes. In his talk, Paabo described how he and his…

Bookmark

By comparing individual DNA letters in multiple modern human genomes with those in the Neanderthal genome, the date of that interbreeding has now been pinned down to 65,000–90,000 years ago. Montgomery…

Bookmark

Mr. James Winters at A Replicated Typo pointed me to a short hypothesis paper, Neanderthal-human Hybrids. This paper argues that selective mating of Neandertal males with females of human populations which had…

Bookmark

Just this year, researchers have estimated that gene flow from Neanderthals to humans occurred between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago (ScienceDaily May, 2010). Researchers have long wondered if Neanderthals were an…

Bookmark

According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated…

Bookmark

The genomes of most modern humans are 1–4% Neanderthal — a result of interbreeding with the close relatives that went extinct 30,000 years ago, according to work by an international group…

Bookmark

For much of the past five million to seven million years over which humans have been evolving, multiple species of our forebears co-existed. But eventually the other lineages went extinct, leaving…

Bookmark

If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454…