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Definition
Homo neanderthalensis interbred with modern humans 50,000 years ago. Approximately 2.5% of the DNA of many individuals living today came from Neanderthals.
Introduction
The only members of the Homo genus roaming the world today are humans, but 100,000 years ago Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis were entwined in an interspecies love affair. Based on the perception of what Neanderthals supposedly looked like, with sloping foreheads, squashed noses, and a nasal voice, it is hard to believe modern humans ever found them alluring. But recent genetic evidence indicates that the two species did indeed fall in love and have fertile offspring. After a 4-year effort led by Svante Paabo and numerous research groups around the world, scientists published the complete Neanderthal genome in 2014 (Prüfer et al. 2014). Researchers compared it with contemporary human DNA and found that on average 2.5% of H. sapiensDNA is of...
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References
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Mainieri, A. (2018). Neanderthals and Humans. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2228-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2228-1
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