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The diet of prehistoric Neanderthals living in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar included seals and dolphins, showing once again that the hominids had skills rivaling those modern humans living then, according to a new study. The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub.

Most notably among the new studies is what researchers say is the first ever direct evidence that a woolly mammoth was brought down by Neanderthal weapons. Margherita Mussi and Paola Villa made the connection after studying a 60,000 to 40,000-year-old mammoth skeleton unearthed near Neanderthal stone tool artifacts at a site called Asolo in northeastern Italy. The discoveries are described in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science. Villa, a curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that other evidence suggests Neanderthals hunted the giant mammals, but not as directly. At the English...

Score one more for Neanderthals. A new study has found that Neanderthal brains grew at much the same rate as modern human brains do, knocking down the idea that they grew faster in a style considered more primitive.

Early stone tools developed by our species Homo sapiens were no more sophisticated than those used by our extinct relatives the Neanderthals. That is the conclusion of researchers who recreated and compared tools used by these ancient human groups. The findings cast doubt on suggestions that more advanced stone technologies gave modern humans a competitive edge over the Neanderthals.

At Nature, we often find that our most read, downloaded or listened to studies are those about our more ancient relatives, whether it's the hobbit of Flores or the oldest human ancestor, Toumai. Last week, a paper in the journal Cell uncovered the first completed sequence of the Neanderthal genome, and some fascinating insights into our evolutionary cousins. Expect more revelations from this project very soon. The demise of the Neanderthals is one of the great mysteries about the origin of our species. They were on a side branch in the human tree, co-existing with our direct ancestors for maybe...

The bones of a Neanderthal man's skeleton, found during several excavations undertaken in 1856, 1997 and 2000. Researchers announced Thursday that they have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of a Neanderthal, using genetic material recovered from a 38,000-year-old bone. (AFP/DDP/File/Michael Latz) WASHINGTON (AFP) - Researchers announced Thursday that they have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of a Neanderthal, using genetic material recovered from a 38,000-year-old bone. Scientists said the breakthrough, published in the August 8th issue of the scientific journal Cell, will help resolve lingering questions about the genealogical relationship between the prehistoric hominids and modern man.

Balkan caves, gorges were pre-Neanderthal haven Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:25am EDT By Ljilja Cvekic BELGRADE (Reuters Life!) - A fragment of a human jaw found in Serbia and believed to be up to 250,000 years old is helping anthropologists piece together the story of prehistoric human migration from Africa to Europe. "This is the earliest evidence we have of humans in the area," Canada's Winnipeg University anthropology professor Mirjana Roksandic told Reuters. The fragment of a lower jaw, complete with three teeth, was discovered in a small cave in the Sicevo gorge in south Serbia. "It is a pre-Neanderthal...

Cholesterol genes 'protect heart' Cholesterol appears to play a key role in heart disease A third of the population have genes that could help them in the fight against heart disease, say scientists. A study of 147,000 patients suggests that certain types of the CETP gene might increase the levels of so-called "good" cholesterol. UK and Dutch research, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found a 5% cut in heart attacks for those with the key types. A UK geneticist said it could point to drugs which help many more people. What it does provide are...

What would it have been like to meet a Neandertal? Researchers have hypothesized answers for decades, seeking to put flesh on ancient bones. But fossils are silent on many traits, from hair and skin color to speech and personality. Personality will have to wait, but in a paper published online in Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147417), an international team announces that it has extracted a pigmentation gene, mc1r, from the bones of two Neandertals. The researchers conclude that at least some Neandertals had pale skin and red hair, similar to some of the Homo sapiens who today inhabit their European homeland....

Neanderthals were separate species, says new human family tree A wax figure representing a Neanderthal man on display at a museum. A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. A new, simplified family tree of humanity, published on Sunday, has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram...

Neandertals Had Big Mouths, Gaped WidelyMati Milstein in Tel Aviv, Israel for National Geographic NewsMay 2, 2008 Neandertals had big mouths that they were able to open unusually wide, new research has determined. A recent study found that a combination of facial structure, forward-positioned molars, and an unusually large gap between the vertical parts of the back of the jaw allowed Neandertals (also spelled Neanderthals) to gape widely. Modern humans and our direct ancestors don't have these traits, the researchers note. But the team was unable to measure exactly how far Neandertals could open their mouths. "This ability is connected...

Neandertals Ate Their Veggies, Tooth Study ShowsSara Goudarzi for National Geographic NewsApril 28, 2008 Tiny bits of plant material found in the teeth of a Neandertal skeleton unearthed in Iraq provide the first direct evidence that the human ancestors ate vegetation, researchers say. Little is known about diet of Neandertals (also spelled Neanderthals), although it's widely assumed that they ate more than just meat. Much of what is known about their eating habits has come from indirect evidence, such as animal remains found at Neandertal sites and chemical signatures called isotopes detected in their teeth. The new hard evidence is...

PARIS (AFP) - After a nearly 30,000-year silence, Neanderthals are speaking once more, thanks to researchers who have modelled the hominids' larynx to replicate the possible sounds they would have made, New Scientist says. The work, led by Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton, is based on Neanderthal fossils found in France, the British journal said on its website on Wednesday. The item includes an audio snippet in which a computer synthesiser replicates how a Neanderthal would say an "e" and compares this with the same sound as made by modern humans. A study published...

Skulls Of Modern Humans And Ancient Neanderthals Evolved Differently Because Of Chance, Not Natural SelectionThe approximate locations of the cranial measurements used in the analyses are superimposed as red lines on lateral (A), anterior (B), and inferior (C) views of a human cranium. (Credit: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS (Copyright 2008)) ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — New research led by UC Davis anthropologist Tim Weaver adds to the evidence that chance, rather than natural selection, best explains why the skulls of modern humans and ancient Neanderthals evolved differently. The findings may alter how anthropologists think about human evolution. Weaver's study...

ARCHAEOLOGISTS TO DRILL IN BEXLEY FOR EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT OCCUPATION By 24 Hour Museum Staff 29/02/2008 An illustration of Homo neanderthalensis at Swanscombe, Kent, one of the sites investigated in the AHOB project. © Natural History Museum Archaeologists from Durham University will be returning to a London borough site where a 19th century historian once found flint tools and animal bones. This time, however, the latest sonic drilling equipment will be used to take samples from the earth, for the ongoing Ancient Human Occupation of Britain II project (AHOB). Initial drillings were carried out at Holmscroft Open Space in September...

Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Unhealthy Diets? Feb. 27, 2008 -- A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history. Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth...

Neanderthal-human hybrid 'a myth' Monday, 10 December 2007 Jennifer Viegas Discovery News This 29,000 year old skull belonged to a hominid with slightly heavier eyebrows than an average person. But this is not enough to convince anthropologists it's evidence of a human-Neanderthal hybrid (Source: Dan Grigorescu) Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid? The answer is possibly 'yes' to the interbreeding but 'no' to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among anthropologists. At the centre of the study, published online...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comfortable, coddled 21st century humans, meet Ice Age Neanderthal. The first complete skeleton of a Neanderthal, the prehistoric people who became extinct about 30,000 years ago, graces an American Museum of Natural History exhibition in New York on the mysteries of human origins. It features fossils and artifacts up to a million years old dug up in caves at two sites in northern Spain. "This really blew me away, I have to say," said Ian Tattersall, co-curator of "The First Europeans: Treasures from the Hills of Atapuerca" exhibition which opened last week and runs through April...

Tooth Scan Reveals Neanderthal Mobility By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer A 40,000-year-old tooth is seen in this undated hand out photo released by Greek Culture Ministry. Analysis of the tooth uncovered in southern Greece indicates for the first time that Neanderthals may have traveled more widely than previously thought, paleontologists announced on Friday, Feb. 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry)(AP) -- Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once thought, paleontologists said Friday. Analysis of the tooth - part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece - showed...

Doctoral student makes discovery on Neanderthal eating habits by Michael Moffett Hatchet Reporter Issue date: 2/7/08 A doctoral student studying hominid paleobiology has pioneered a method for analyzing reindeer bones from around 65,000 to 12,000 years ago, an accomplishment that allows scientists to further understand the eating habits of early humans. Early humans flocked to reindeer meat when the temperature dropped, J. Tyler Faith discovered. "We see a steady increase in the abundance of reindeer, associated with declines in summer temperature," Faith said. Faith analyzed bones from the Grotte XVI archaeological site in southern France in order to better understand...

According to archaeologist Dr. Eugene Morin, of Trent University, the long-held view that 35,000 to 40,000 years ago Neanderthals died out and were replaced by migrant homo sapiens in western Europe is not as convincing as once thought... In his study, Prof. Morin suggests that instead of declining to extinction, Neanderthal anatomical characteristics were largely weakened during an episode of significant population decline caused by a cold snap... His theory is based on animal bones recovered at Saint-Cesaire, an archaeological site located in western France... large herbivores such as bison and horse decreased in numbers, whereas reindeer, a cold-adapted species...

Neanderthals probably froze to death in the last ice age because rapid climate change caught them by surprise without the tools needed to make warm clothes, finds new research... By the time some Neanderthals developed sewing tools it was too little too late, said Gilligan... Most of the tools supposed to have given modern humans the edge over Neanderthals were actually more useful for making warm clothes. The important tools developed by modern humans included stone blades, bone points and eventually needles, which could cut and pierce hides to sew them together into multi-layered clothes including underwear, said Gilligan... Modern...

Research shows Neanderthals may have talked By Michael Kahn Thu Oct 18, 4:06 PM ET Neanderthals, often portrayed as grunting, club-carrying brutes, may have been capable of sophisticated speech, researchers said on Thursday. A DNA analysis shows Neanderthals share with humans two key changes in the FOXP2 gene known to be involved in speech, raising the possibility the species possessed some prerequisites for language, the researchers said. "From the point of this gene at least the Neanderthals could have had language like we do," said Johannes Krause, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, who led the study....

Atapuerca gives us incontrovertible evidence that there was human life, already in north Spain, in 1.2m years BC. Is it possible that the "out of Africa" theory is wrong - that mankind evolved separately in Europe? ...Atapuerca's rich limestone silt hides still another secret, even more astonishing. As archaeologist Susana Callizo explains... "The question you have to ask is, how did those skeletons get down there? The Pit of Bones is inaccessible. Even today it is difficult to approach - the archaeologists have to abseil down a narrow chasm, then crawl through passages, before they can start digging. Some people...

Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals' pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were likely redheads. The scientists -- led by Holger Römpler of Harvard University and the University of Leipzig, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig -- extracted, amplified, and sequenced a...

Two molar teeth of around 63,400 years old show that Neanderthal predecessors of humans may have been dental hygiene fans, the Web site of newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday. The teeth have "grooves formed by the passage of a pointed object, which confirms the use of a small stick for cleaning the mouth," Paleontology Professor Juan Luis Asuarga told reporters, presenting an archaeological find in Madrid. The fossils, unearthed in Pinilla del Valle, are the first human examples found in the Madrid region in 25 years, the regional government's culture department said.......

LONDON - Neanderthals probably fell victim to taller and superior Cro-Magnons rather than catastrophic climate change, researchers said on Wednesday. Using a new method to calibrate carbon-14 dating, the international team found the last Neanderthals died at least 3,000 years before a major change in temperatures occurred. This suggests either modern humans or a combination of humans and less severe climate change caused the species' demise some 30,000 years ago, said Chronis Tzedakis, a paleoecologist at the University of Leeds, who led the study published in the journal Nature.....

Source: University of California, Davis Date: August 16, 2007 Handsome By Chance: Why Humans Look Different From Neanderthals Science Daily — Chance, not natural selection, best explains why the modern human skull looks so different from that of its Neanderthal relative, according to a new study led by Tim Weaver, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis. Model of the Neanderthal man. Exhibited in the Dinosaur Park Münchehagen, Germany. (Credit: iStockphoto/Klaus Nilkens) "For 150 years, scientists have tried to decipher why Neanderthal skulls are different from those of modern humans," Weaver said. "Most accounts have emphasized natural selection and the...

Chance and isolation gave humans elegant skulls 24 July 2007 NewScientist.com news service Only chance kept us from looking like our crag-browed Neanderthal cousins. A statistical analysis suggests that the skull differences between the two species stems not from positive natural selection but from genetic drift, in which physical features change randomly, without an environmental driving force. Some anthropologists had put the cranial differences down to natural selection arising from Neanderthals' use of their teeth as tools, for instance, or from modern humans' speech. To test if genetic drift could have been responsible instead, Timothy Weaver of the University of...

Neanderthals 'were ahead of their time' Last Updated: 2:42am BST 14/06/2007 Big, brutish and stupid - it's a commonly held view that our prehistoric predecessors were as wild and unsophisticated as the animals they hunted. Neanderthal man was 'as smart as we are' But Neanderthal man was not as slow-witted as he looked and was in reality as smart as we are, an archaeologist claims. They were actually innovators who used different forms of tools to adapt to the ecological challenges posed by harsh habitats as they spread through Europe. Although our ancestors have become the butt of jokes about...

Neanderthals bid for human status 13 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to. This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals,...

Dry period in Spain explains Neanderthals' last stand 18 May 2007 NewScientist.com news service While modern humans were taking over the rest of Europe, Neanderthals were somehow able to cling on in southern Iberia. Now a climate model has helped to explain why. It suggests the region became desert-like around 39,000 years ago, making it undesirable for modern humans. Pierre Sepulchre from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues modelled climate and vegetation patterns over the Iberian peninsula around 40,000 years ago. In particular they were interested in the impact of "Heinrich event 4" - an episode of sluggish...

Contact: Erik Trinkaus trinkaus@wustl.edu 314-935-5207 Washington University in St. Louis The emerging fate of the Neandertals For nearly a century, anthropologists have been debating the relationship of Neandertals to modern humans. Central to the debate is whether Neandertals contributed directly or indirectly to the ancestry of the early modern humans that succeeded them. As this discussion has intensified in the past decades, it has become the central research focus of Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Trinkaus has examined the earliest modern humans in Europe, including specimens in Romania, Czech Republic and France. Those...

     National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE Thursday, March 15, 2007 2:00 p.m. DST Subscribe   CONTACT: Jules AsherNIMH press office 301-443-4536 Tiny, Spontaneous Gene Mutations May Boost Autism RiskTiny gene mutations, each individually rare, pose more risk for autism than had been previously thought, suggests a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health, a component of the National Institutes of Health.These spontaneous deletions and duplications of genetic material were found to be ten times more prevalent in sporadic cases of autism spectrum disorders (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/autismmenu.cfm) than in healthy control subjects —...

DID ANATOMICALLY modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals, the muscle-bound, big-browed and possibly mute cave dwellers who disappeared from Europe and the Middle East about 30,000 years ago? The answer may be less interesting than the fact that so many Homo sapiens are fixated on the question. The debate about whether there's a Neanderthal skeleton in our collective closet was revived last week when two groups of scientists reported that they had deciphered DNA from the thigh bone of a Neanderthal man who lived in Croatia 38,000 years ago. From their analysis of genetic material in the bone, the scientists estimated...

The Neanderthals didn't disappear because they were slouches when it came to hunting. According to a new study based on material from the Republic of Georgia, Neanderthals were as good at hunting as early modern humans. But it may have been gender equality that put them at a disadvantage to their Homo sapien neighbors. Anthropologists observed that Neanderthals focused primarily on large game for food, while the frequency of healed fractures present in both genders and all ages suggests everyone participated in the hunt. Neanderthal shelters lacked evidence of gathered foods, such as seeds, as well as signs of skilled...

The December issue of the journal Current Anthropology offers a new hypothesis for how the Neanderthals died out 10,000 years ago. It happens that there was little or no division of labor in Neanderthal society. Unlike in early human communities, where the men hunted and the women gathered (or hunted small animals), male and female Neanderthals were both engaged in going after big game, at least if the evidence from their gravesites is to be believed. When there was no big game, there was no food at all. Betty Friedan is probably turning over in her own gravesite right now,...

Humans' closest cousins, the Neanderthals, vanished 30,000 years ago after sharing turf with humans for millenniums. But why they disappeared remains a mystery. Two research teams decided to try a new approach: Instead of studying tiny fragments of DNA from one of these cousins, they looked for ways to string fragments together to get a more complete source of potential genetic clues. Conventional wisdom held that this task was impossible for material this old. But using the 38,000-year-old remains of a 38-year-old male, found in a Croatian cave, each group now says it has rebuilt, or sequenced, long segments of...

An undated photograph shows the inside of the Vindija cave in Croatia, where a leg bone from a male Neanderthal was found and and used to sequence DNA by researchers who on Wednesdauy said it shows that Neanderthals are truly distant relatives of modern humans who interbred rarely, if at all, with our own immediate ancestors. (Johannes Krause- Max- Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology/Handout/Reuters) Researchers have sequenced DNA from the leg bone of a Neanderthal man who died 38,000 years ago and said on Wednesday it shows the Neanderthals are truly distant relatives of modern humans who interbred rarely,...

Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift -- a gene that helped them develop superior brains, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding, the team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago said. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and so-called Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe. "Finding evidence of mixing is not all that surprising. But...

Their very name has become a byword for all that is brutish, stupid and crude. In the popular imagination, these were the violent, shambling, grunting apemen of legend. If you accuse someone of being a Neanderthal, you are not paying them a compliment. But Neanderthal Man, who represented one of the oddest and most mysterious chapters in the history of humanity, has been undergoing something of a makeover in recent years. We now know that these extinct cousins were not the brutes of legend but a sophisticated and intelligent species, capable of creating fire, fashioning delicate tools, burying their dead...

When it comes to the border, we’re all Neanderthals now. When the amateur border guards, the Minutemen, first set up with their lawn chairs and binoculars at the U.S.-Mexico border and started talking about the need to build a fence, polite opinion scoffed. Now, the fence almost represents a consensus position, embraced by the left and right alike, from likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to the rabble-rousing pro-enforcement conservative Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. Sixty-four Democrats just voted with Republicans in the House to pass legislation authorizing 700 miles of double-layered fence along the border. The Senate recently voted...

Last Update: Thursday, September 1, 2005. 3:29pm (AEST) A reconstruction of the face of a young female Neanderthal who lived about 35,000 years ago in France. (AFP) Modern humans, Neanderthals shared earth for 1,000 years New evidence has emerged that Neanderthals co-existed with anatomically modern humans for at least 1,000 years in central France.The finding suggests Neanderthals came to a tragic and lingering end.Few chapters in the rise of Homo sapiens, as modern mankind is known, have triggered as much debate as the fate of the Neanderthals.Smaller and squatter than Homo sapiens but with larger brains, Neanderthals lived in Europe,...

Scientists bid to take Neanderthal DNA sample KARL MANSFIELD SCIENTISTS are attempting to extract DNA for the first time from the fossilised bones thought to be of a Neanderthal man who roamed Britain 35,000 years ago. Experts plan to use a tooth from an upper jaw to establish whether the closest relative of modern humans lived on the British Isles later than it was once thought. The fragment of an upper jaw, which was found in 1926 at Kent's Cavern in Devon, was originally thought to be human, but experts now think it could date back even further. Chris Stringer,...

French and Belgian archaeologists say they have proof Neanderthals lived in near-tropical conditions near France's Channel coast about 125,000 years ago. In a dig at Caours, near Abbeville, France, archeologists found evidence of a Neanderthal "butcher's shop" to which animals as large as rhinoceros, elephant and aurochs, the forerunner of the cow, were dragged and butchered, The Independent reported Wednesday. Jean-Luc Locht, a Belgian expert in prehistory at the French government's archaeological service, told the newspaper: "This is a very important site, a unique site. It proves Neanderthals thrived in a warm northwest Europe and hunted animals like the rhinoceros...

Panel says professor of human origins made up data, plagiarized works A flamboyant anthropology professor, whose work had been cited as evidence Neanderthal man once lived in Northern Europe, has resigned after a German university panel ruled he fabricated data and plagiarized the works of his colleagues. Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a Frankfurt university panel ruled, lied about the age of human skulls, dating them tens of thousands of years old, even though they were much younger, reports Deutsche Welle. "The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years," the university said...

Our prolonged childhoods make us Homo sapiens unique among primates. Scientists have a theory to explain this lengthy maturation process: Our brains need many years of learning and physical growth before we're equipped for the complexities of human living. Now a new study says we weren't the only humans who took their time growing up. Analysis of Neandertal teeth suggests that the extinct species had similarly lengthy childhoods. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, compared growth rates of Neandertal front teeth with those of three modern human populations: Inuit (Eskimo), English,...

Our evolutionary cousin the Neanderthal may have survived in Europe much longer than previously thought. A study in Nature magazine suggests the species may have lived in Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago. The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent. The new evidence suggests they held on in Europe's deep south long after the arrival of Homo sapiens. The research team believes the Gibraltar Neanderthals may even have been the very last of their kind. "It shows conclusively that Gorham's...

Neanderthals and humans lived side by side 18:00 13 September 2006 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper Neanderthals were thought to have died out as modern humans arrived in Europe. Now, artifacts found in a cave in Gibraltar reveal that the two groups coexisted for millenia before Neanderthals finally dwindled out of existence. Homo sapiens moved into Europe about 32,000 years ago. But the newly unearthered artefacts shows that a remnant population of Homo neanderthalensis clung on until at least 28,000 years ago, a significant overlap. Clive Finlayson at the Gibraltar Museum, and colleagues, recovered 240 stone tools and artefacts from...