US EditionNew Study Reveals Neanderthals Experienced Population Crash 110,000 Years Ago
An Ice Age bottleneck about 75,000 years ago forced Neanderthals into southwestern Europe, reducing their genetic variation to a single lineage before extinction, researchers found.
8 Articles
8 Articles
New study reveals Neanderthals experienced population crash 110,000 years ago
A new study suggests that Neanderthals experienced a dramatic loss of genetic variation during the course of their evolution, foreshadowing their eventual extinction. Examination of semicircular canals of ear shows Neanderthals experienced 'bottleneck' event where physical and genetic variation was lost.
The collective imagination often portrays the end of the Neandertalians as a sudden erasure, swept away by the triumphant arrival of our direct ancestors, the Homo sapiens. Yet, the fossil and genetic archives paint a radically different and much more complex picture. A vast international study has just proved that this population, once flourishing in Europe, has in fact [...]
Professors from Serbia also participated in the team's work on this discovery.
Archaeogenetics: Neanderthals and the bottleneck theory
Late Neanderthals are believed to have descended from a small group that survived extreme Ice Age conditions in southwestern France. In collaboration with an international team, researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have confirmed the “bottleneck theory” and dated it more precisely in a new study: Their findings suggest that both the geographic distribution and the… Source
New research shows that cold periods and a decline in genetic diversity crucially weakened Neanderthals before their extinction
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