our Neanderthal heritage

I have a soft spot for Neanderthals, so it's always nice to see new insight coming out into what they left us, not just in terms of bones and artifacts, but also in our genomes. With genetic discoveries in the UK Biobank and the recent discovery of the genome of Denny, the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan, there was now enough material for a feature on the encounters and minglings between the three groups of ancient humans that were out and about in Palaeolithic Eurasia. Still no news on why two of them became extinct. Maybe they were just climate change deniers ...

My feature is out now:


Mingling with Neanderthals

Current Biology Volume 29, issue 4, pages R105-R107, February 18, 2019

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Oh, and in the process I also learned that there is now an entire book about the Neanderthal residents of the Sima de las Palomas cave, where firstborn and I spent a week helping Michael Walker's team with the excavations, many years ago:

The people of Palomas : Neandertals from the Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, southeastern Spain
Erik Trinkaus; Michael J Walker
College Station, Texas : Texas A&M University Press, [2017]