With the help of a protein-fingerprinting technique, researchers have identified one small chunk of bone out of thousands as belonging to a Neanderthal.
Bone fragments from archaeological sites are often too small to identify the species of origin. Samantha Brown at the University of Oxford, UK, and her colleagues analysed 2,315 such pieces from the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia — where Denisovans (an archaic human group) were first identified.
The team extracted proteins from each fragment, finding human collagen protein in only one. Mitochondrial DNA sequencing and radiocarbon dating then showed that this 1.7-gram piece was from a Neanderthal — not a Denisovan — living more than 50,000 years ago.
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Neanderthal uncovered. Nature 532, 9 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/532009d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/532009d
