By now, it’s firmly established that modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives met and mated as our ancestors expanded ...

A preference for pairings between male Neanderthals and female Homo sapiens may answer the question of why there are "Neanderthal deserts" in human chromosomes.

Did modern humans erase Neanderthals, or did our close cousins fade away for reasons that had little to do with us? A pair of major papers in Science and Nature on Dec. 12, 2024, sharpen that question ...

Long ago, Neanderthals and modern humans interbred. But among Neanderthals, their modern human blood came mostly from their ...

Neanderthal DNA study reveals surprising partner preference - This intriguing discovery raises significant questions about the nature of these prehistoric interactions ...

Most people today have a little Neanderthal DNA sprinkled through their genome. These genomic signals are the telltale signs that overlapping populations of ancient anatomically modern humans and ...

Modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor, lived side by side in parts of Eurasia, and even had children together, yet their faces ended up strikingly different. The contrast between our ...

Many people today simply assume that our evolution has quietly ended with the development of the modern human. It's easy to think that medicine, science, and modern living have made us "perfect" or ...

Geneticists have found an interesting pattern in how early humans and Neanderthals interbred—and it wasn't balanced.

Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

Researchers studied ancient tooth fossils and found that a gene mutation in modern humans (right) better protected them against lead and gave them an advantage over Neanderthals (left). Kyle Dykes / ...