[asa] What happened to the Neanderthals? Check their DNA.

from the November 16, 2006 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1116/p01s02-usgn.html

What happened to the Neanderthals? Check their DNA.

By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Humans' closest cousins, the Neanderthals, vanished 30,000 years ago
after sharing turf with humans for millenniums. But why they disappeared
remains a mystery.

Two research teams decided to try a new approach: Instead of studying
tiny fragments of DNA from one of these cousins, they looked for ways to
string fragments together to get a more complete source of potential
genetic clues. Conventional wisdom held that this task was impossible
for material this old. But using the 38,000-year-old remains of a
38-year-old male, found in a Croatian cave, each group now says it has
rebuilt, or sequenced, long segments of Neanderthal DNA - the twisted,
ladder-shaped molecule in the nucleus of cells that holds an organism's
genetic blueprint.

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Received on Thu Nov 16 16:28:15 2006