The facial structure of prehistoric and modern skulls could link humans back to neanderthal roots.
“Ancient DNA caused a revolution in how we think about human evolution,” said Steven Churchill, co-author of the study and a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in. “We often think of evolution as branches on a tree, and researchers have spent a lot of time trying to trace back the path that led to us, Homo sapiens. But we’re now beginning to understand that it isn’t a tree–it’s more like a series of streams that converge and diverge at multiple points.
A data set comprising of 13 Neanderthals, 233 prehistoric Homo sapiens, and 83 modern humans was built by the team from the available literature. They focused on standard skull measurements as a control to study the size and shape of key facial structures. Having the control allowed the team to best determine whether a human population was likely to have interbred with Neanderthal populations and the extent of interbreeding..
“We found that the facial characteristics we focused on were not strongly influenced by climate, which made it easier to identify likely genetic influences,” said Ann Ross, a corresponding author of the study and professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. “We also found that facial shape was a more useful variable for tracking the influence of Neanderthal interbreeding in human populations over time. Neanderthals were just bigger than humans.
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