Scientists create genetic blueprint of Neanderthal
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
February 12, 2009
An international team Thursday said it has completed a draft of the genome (or genetic blueprint) of Neanderthals, which shows that our extinct cousins made "very little, if any" contribution to human genes.
Team chief Svante Pääbo of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig described the work as a 63% complete gene map. This genome was stitched together from fossil DNA samples taken from four Neanderthals found in Europe.
Neanderthals occupied Europe from about 800,000 to 30,000 years ago. Scholars have long argued over their extinction, and their relationship to people.
"We still have lots of gaps, but we also now have a good overview of the (Neanderthal) genome," said Pääbo, in a webcast from Germany. The announcement previews a presentation scheduled for Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. "We see this as a tool for future biologists (looking for) what's really unique to modern humans."
"I think it is spectacular, to get something out of bones 40,000 years old, absolutely stunning," says anthropological geneticist Henry Harpending of the University of Utah, author of The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.
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