Study: Neanderthal DNA Lives On in Modern Humans

Correction Appended: May 8, 2010A decade after scientists first cracked the human genome, researchers announced in the May 7 issue of Science that they have done the same for Neanderthals, the species of hominid that existed from roughly 400,000 to 30,000 years ago, when their closest relatives, early modern humans, may have driven them to extinction. Led by ancient-DNA expert Svante Pbo of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, scientists reconstructed about 60% of the Neanderthal genome by analyzing tiny chains of ancient DNA extracted from bone fragments of three female Neanderthals excavated in the late 1970s and early ’80s from a cave in Croatia.

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Endangered Species: Debate on How to Avoid Extinction

The planet is in the middle of an extinction crisis, the sixth great wave in its history. But unlike major extinction events of the past — like the Permian-Triassic event 250 million years ago, in which 70% of all terrestrial species were wiped out, probably because of an asteroid impact or a similar natural disaster — this time human beings are the cause

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