Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 22 February 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060220-11
News
Better bone dates reveal bad news for Neanderthals
Modern humans took over Europe in just 5,000 years.
Advances in the science of radiocarbon dating - a common, but oft-maligned palaeontological tool - have narrowed down the overlap between Europe's earliest modern humans and the Neanderthals that preceded them.
Refinements to the technique, which estimates an artefact's age by sampling the amount of radioactive carbon left over from when it was formed, suggest that Homo sapiens wrested Europe from its prehistoric counterpart even quicker than had been thought.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
There are currently no comments.
