1. The Gibraltar Museum, 18–20 Bomb House Lane, Gibraltar
2. Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada
3. Museo Arqueologico de El Puerto Santa María, 11500 El Puerto Santa María, Spain
4. Departamento de Geodinámica y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales, Universidad de Huelva, 21071 Huelva, Spain
5. Museo Municipal, 11650 Villamartín, Spain
6. Institut Catala de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolucio Social, Area de Prehistoria, Universidad Rovira i Virgili, 43003 Tarragona, Spain
7. Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universidad Autonoma, 28049 Madrid, Spain
8. Department of Plant Biology, Universidad de Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain
9. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), 28006 Madrid, Spain
10. The Herpetological Conservation Trust, Bournemouth, Dorset BH1 4AP, UK
11. Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, CSIC-UGR, 18002 Granada, Spain
12. Department of Geography, Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK
13. Laboratorio de Arqueobotánica, Instituto de Historia (CSIC), 28014 Madrid, Spain
14. Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueologia, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
15. Area de Prehistoria, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Cádiz, 11003 Cádiz, Spain
16. Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK
17. Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK
18. Institute for Research on Earth Evolution, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka 237-0061, Japan

Correspondence to: Clive Finlayson^1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.F. (Email: jcfinlay@gibraltar.gi).

The late survival of archaic hominin populations and their long contemporaneity with modern humans is now clear for southeast Asia¹. In Europe the extinction of the Neanderthals, firmly associated with Mousterian technology, has received much attention, and evidence of their survival after 35 kyr bp has recently been put in doubt². Here we present data, based on a high-resolution record of human occupation from Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, that establish the survival of a population of Neanderthals to 28 kyr bp. These Neanderthals survived in the southernmost point of Europe, within a particular physiographic context, and are the last currently recorded anywhere. Our results show that the Neanderthals survived in isolated refuges well after the arrival of modern humans in Europe.

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