Neandertals

Re-examination of a circa 100,000-year-old archaic early human skull found 35 years ago in northern China has revealed the surprising presence of an inner-ear formation long thought to occur only in Neandertals.

The timing, process and archaeology of the peopling of Europe by early modern humans have been actively debated for more than a century. Reassessment of the anatomy and dating of a fragmentary upper jaw with three teeth from Kent’s Cavern in southern England has shed new light on these issues. 

TrinkausNew research published by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, establishes a late persistence of Neadertals in southwestern Europe some 40,000 years ago. The research sheds light on what were probably the last Neandertals on earth.

Photo courtesy Muzeul Olteniei / Erik TrinkausThe early modern human cranium from the Pestera Muierii, Romania.A re-examination of ancient human bones from Romania reveals more evidence that humans and Neandertals interbred. Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues radiocarbon dated and analyzed the shapes of human bones from Romania’s Pestera Muierii (Cave of the Old Woman). The fossils, which were discovered in 1952, add to the small number of early modern human remains from Europe known to be more than 28,000 years old. More…

Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, examines a Neandertal skull.New scientific evidence challenges a common perception that Neandertals — a close evolutionary relative to modern humans that lived 230,000 to 30,000 years ago — possessed exceptionally long faces. Instead, a report authored by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that modern humans are really the “odd man out” when it comes to facial lengths, which drop off dramatically compared with their ancestral predecessors.