Neanderthals are almost Twice as old

[Anomalocaris]

Neanderthals are almost TWICE as old as first thought: DNA suggests extinct human species emerged 700,000 years ago

They are one of our closest human relatives and dominated Europe and much of Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, but Neanderthals may be far older than previously thought.

A new study by geneticists has revealed a collection of fossilised bones discovered in a cave in northern Spain belonged to an early member of the Neanderthal family.

It is the oldest partial genome from early human fossils ever to be sequenced and pushes back the date for the origins of the Neanderthal branch of our evolutionary tree by up to 300,000 years.

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[Gingitsune]

Thanks for sharing.

We finally have parts of Heidelbergensis nuclear ADN!

So, his nuclear DNA is closer related to Neandertal even though his mt DNA is closer to Denisova... close enough to be reclassified as Neandertal. And they suspect Denisova and these early Neandertal were mingling together, hence why they share mtDNA.

I wonder if other Heidelbergensis will be reclassified as well. Or maybe just the European ones?

And will they try to extract DNA from the Homo Antecessor they also found in the same cave? At least mtDNA? The bones are even older, I wonder if it is even possible.

There is also an article from Science on the same topic.