Scientists studying the DNA of Neanderthals say they can find no evidence that this ancient species ever interbred with modern humans.



But our closest ancestors may well have been able to speak as well as us, said Prof Svante Paabo from Germany's Max Planck Institute.

He was speaking in Chicago, US, where he announced the "first draft" of a complete Neanderthal genome.

The genetics information has been gleaned from fossils found in Croatia.

Prof Svante Paabo confirmed that Neanderthals shared the FOXP2 gene associated with speech and language in modern humans.

A total of three billion "letters", covering 60% of the Neanderthal genome, have been sequenced by scientists from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences Corporation, in Branford, Connecticut.

The majority of the sequence comes from bones from Vindija Cave in Croatia.

The draft genome can give us clues to the genetic regions which make us "uniquely human", Prof Paabo told BBC News.

"It was always a dream to look at the DNA of our closest evolutionary relatives.

"Now that we have the Neanderthal genome, we can look for areas in the human genome where a change seems to have swept rapidly through us since we separated from Neanderthals.

"There, something special may have happened in us. The cool thing is, now that we have the whole genome, we can look for these changes without bias."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7886477.stm

Thanks for sharing that

No probs Mirror

I hope it clears up for some (or confuses more?), that the "neanderthal" has nothing to do with the homo sapiens, just a different "species" of humanoids. You can't even compare it like wolves and dogs, because dogs are actually descendants of wolves and dogs can interbreed.
Compare the 2 like chimpanzees vs. orangutans. 2 different types of apes, possibly a common ancestor, but chimpanzees can't interbreed with orangutans... as far as I know.
Imagine if Neanderthals would be still around, a different type of humanoid, with a different DNA structure, only looks similar to us. Weird, isn't it?

Correct, the only problem is that most of the people who need to read this wont understand it.

Thats true. They are divergent as the mitochondrial DNA findings thus far but I think they are still mapping the entire genome for Neanderthal now. That place in Connecticut is doing this. The bone is called V-80. I forget the name of the lab now.

"something special happened to us" - comment sure will spark some imagination...

Don't want to say anything, but there will be others who will.

Well, today it would be just another group to discriminate against, sadly.

They looked pretty similar to humans but just more robust and I hate to say it, but they were UGLY. Even paleontologists will admit that most of the time. However you have to remember that they co-existed with Cro-magnom and to them , we probably appeared hideous also. These tall, skinny things with round heads. So its relative.