Humans possess unique physical and cognitive characteristics relative to other primates. Comparative analyses of the human and chimpanzee genomes are beginning to reveal sequence changes on the human lineage that may have contributed to the evolution of human traits. However, these studies cannot identify the genetic differences that distinguish modern humans from archaic human species. Here, I...

Genomic studies have shown thatNeanderthals interbredwithmodern humans,andthatnon-Africanstodayare theproductsof thismixture. The antiquity ofNeanderthal gene flow intomodernhumansmeans thatgenomic regions thatderive fromNeanderthals inanyonehuman todayareusually less thanahundredkilobases in size.However,Neanderthal haplotypes are also distinctive enough that several studies have been able to ...

Our knowledge of Neanderthals is based on a limited number of remains and artifacts from which we must make inferences about their biology, behavior, and relationship to ourselves. Here, we describe the characterization of these extinct hominids from a new perspective, based on the development of a Neanderthal metagenomic library and its high-throughput sequencing and analysis. Several lines of...

Our knowledge of Neanderthals is based on a limited number of remains and artifacts from which we must make inferences about their biology, behavior, and relationship to ourselves. Here, we describe the characterization of these extinct hominids from a new perspective, based on the development of a Neanderthal metagenomic library and its high-throughput sequencing and analysis. Several lines of...

Approximately 2-4% of genetic material in human populations outside Africa is derived from Neanderthals who interbred with anatomically modern humans. Recent studies have shown that this Neanderthal DNA is depleted around functional genomic regions; this has been suggested to be a consequence of harmful epistatic interactions between human and Neanderthal alleles. However, using published estim...

Hybridization between humans and Neanderthals has resulted in a low level of Neanderthal ancestry scattered across the genomes of many modern-day humans. After hybridization, on average, selection appears to have removed Neanderthal alleles from the human population. Quantifying the strength and causes of this selection against Neanderthal ancestry is key to understanding our relationship to Ne...

Using living humans as an extant referent, this paper examines the probability that the frequency differences in Neanderthal “unique” non-metric traits observed between Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans could be sampled from two major populations of the same species. Neanderthal-like features occur in very low frequencies in living humans, if present at all. Rather, other feature...

Skin color is one of the most visible and important phenotypes of modern humans. Melanocyte-stimulating hormone and its receptor played an important role in regulating skin color. In this article, we present evidence of Neanderthal introgression encompassing the melanocyte-stimulating hormone receptor gene MC1R. The haplotypes from Neanderthal introgression diverged with the Altai Neanderthal 1...

The new Krapina Neanderthal museum consists of two sections: a section reconstructing the life of the Krapina Neanderthal and a section bringing the latest knowledge about the evolution of life on Earth. It is a well of scientific information, a teaching tool, and the world's largest find of Neanderthal fossil remains. This article briefly reports a tour visit of members of the Croatian Scienti...

Neanderthals contributed genetic material to modern humans via multiple admixture events. Initial admixture events presumably occurred in Western Asia shortly after humans migrated out of Africa. Despite being a focal point of admixture, earlier studies indicate lower Neanderthal introgression rates in some Western Asian populations as compared with other Eurasian populations. To better underst...