Latest Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Stories
Scientists in the Netherlands have found part of a Neanderthal man's skull that has been dredged up from the North Sea, BBC News reported.The specimen is a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male and experts say it is the first confirmed find of its kind.The 60,000-year-old fossil has undergone an extensive analysis of chemical "isotopes" that match results from other Neanderthal specimens, suggesting a carnivorous diet.This is the first confirmed specimen...
International researchers say they have completed a draft of the genetic blueprint of Neanderthals, humans' primitive cousin. The scientists say their discovery shows Neanderthals made very little, if any contribution to human genes, USA Today reported Saturday. Neanderthals occupied Europe from about 800,000 to 30,000 years ago, the newspaper noted. Team chief Svante Paabo of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig said their findings provide a good overview...
Scientists said Thursday that they have mapped a first draft of the Neanderthal genome, which might reveal the links between modern humans and their prehistoric cousins.Researchers used DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian fossils to show over 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome and sequencing three billion bases of DNA."The Neanderthal genome sequence will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals as well as help identify those genetic changes...
In a population survey of West African chimpanzees living in Côte d'Ivoire, researchers estimate that this endangered subspecies has dropped in numbers by a whopping 90 percent since the last survey was conducted 18 years ago. The few remaining chimpanzees are now highly fragmented, with only one viable population living in Taï National Park, according to a report in the October 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.This alarming decline in a country that had been...
'Face-to-face' a first for endangered apesScientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild. This is the first time that western gorillas have been observed and photographed mating in such a manner.The photographs were part of a study conducted in a forest clearing in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo that appeared...
A 40,000-year-old tooth, discovered in southern Greece, may suggest that Neanderthals were more mobile than was once assumed. The tooth is part of the first and only Neanderthal remains to be found in Greece. Researchers say that it shows that the ancient human had spent part of its life away from where it died.."Neanderthal mobility is highly controversial," said paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.Some...
WASHINGTON -- Researchers studying Neanderthal DNA say it should be possible to construct a complete genome of the ancient hominid despite the degradation of the DNA over time.There is also hope for reconstructing the genome of the mammoth and cave bear, according to a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.Their findings are published in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of...
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science CorrespondentWASHINGTON -- Experts who first managed to tease some DNA out of the bones of a Neanderthal teamed up on Thursday with a gene-sequencing company to try to get a complete Neanderthal genetic code.The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and 454 Life Sciences Corp in Branford, Connecticut, said they would use new technology that amplifies tiny samples of the scarce DNA from bones."The advent of 454 Sequencing...
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- German and U.S. scientists have launched a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome, the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said Wednesday. The project, which involves isolating genetic fragments from fossils of the prehistoric beings who originally inhabited Europe, is being carried out at the Leipzig-based institute. "The project is very new and is just at its beginning," said Sandra Jacob, a spokeswoman for the institute. U.S....
WALNUT CREEK, CA - The genomic DNA sequencing of an extinct Pleistocene cave bear species--the kind of stuff once reserved for science fiction--has been logged into scientific literature thanks to investigators from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI). This study, published in the June 2 online edition of the journal Science, has set the research community's sights on traveling back in time through the vehicle DNA sequencing to reveal the story of other extinct...
