The place of Neanderthals in the story of human evolution has been hotly debated for decades.  A distant cousin to our species, Neanderthals had already been in Europe over 250,000 years when Homo sapiens first arrived there 35,000 years ago.
Often called Cro-Magnoids, these first Europeans are believed by many scientists to have out-competed the Neanderthals, [...]

Tags: Ancient DNA, Cro-Magnoids, human origins, Neanderthals

Last month I had the opportunity to go to the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution conference in the striking city of Barcelona. This is the premiere conference for geneticists studying evolution in everything from bacteria to fruit flies, weeds, worms and our favorite model organism, humans! This is a highly interactive conference: almost everyone [...]

Tags: 454, FOXP2, human origins, neanderthal, out of africa, paabo