Word: neanderthaler
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Also coming along, thanks to two independent teams of researchers, is the genome of the closest relative of all: the Neanderthal. Ancestors of Neanderthals first appeared some 500,000 years ago, and for a long time it was a toss-up whether that lineage would outlive our own species, at...
The Neanderthals weren't nearly as primitive as many assume, observes Eddy Rubin, director of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif. "They had fire, burial ceremonies, the rudiments of what we would call art. They were advanced--but nothing like what humans have done...
The job isn't an easy one. Like any complex organic molecule, DNA degrades over time, and bones that lie in the ground for thousands of years become badly contaminated with the DNA of bacteria and fungi. Anyone who handles the fossils can also leave human DNA behind. After probing...
As a result, progress is maddeningly slow. And while he can't reveal details, Pääbo says he'll soon be announcing in a major scientific journal the sequencing of 1 million base pairs of the Neanderthal genome. And he says he has 4 million more in the bag...
Although Pääbo admits that he still hasn't learned much about what distinguishes us from our closest cousins, simply showing he can reconstruct significant DNA sequences from such long-dead creatures is an important proof of concept. Both he and Rubin agree that within a couple of years...