Palaeontology

Neanderthal babies were larger and grew faster than human babies

By T.K. Randall
April 18, 2026 ·  2 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Despite disappearing around 40,000 years ago, the Neanderthals have been brought back into the limelight in recent years thanks to a range of fascinating paleontological discoveries.

One of the most recent, which was found in Amud Cave in Israel, is a near-complete Neanderthal baby skeleton which dates back between 51,000 and 56,000 years.

While researchers have been unable to tell if it was a boy or a girl, an analysis of its teeth and enamel growth has determined its age to be around six months old when it died.

Here's the strange thing about it, though - other parts of the baby's body such as the arms and legs show a level of growth equivalent to that of a human baby that's 14 months old.

Neanderthal infant remains found at other sites also exhibit similar characteristics.This seems to suggest that Neanderthal babies were larger and grew faster than their human counterparts.

"Most notably, the infant exhibits signs of unusually rapid somatic [body] growth, suggesting that Neanderthals had a distinct developmental strategy in early life," the researchers wrote.

You can find the full details of the study - here.

Exactly why this is the case remains unclear - perhaps the harsher conditions of the time may have meant that Neanderthal babies needed to reach physical maturity as quickly as possible.

Despite this advantage over modern humans, however, it didn't stop the species from going extinct.

Source: Phys.org | Comments (2)

Tags: Neanderthals