Scientists have spent years assembling evidence to fill out the intricate Neanderthal timeline from emergence to extinction, and the latest update has cemented a date for Neanderthal interbreeding with humans. A new pair of studies published in the journal Science sheds light on the duration of gene flow between Neanderthals and humans, confirming that it lasted from approximately 50,500 years to 43,500 years ago.
The two collaborative studies — involving a team of researchers from University of California, Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany — settled upon an average date of 47,000 years ago for Neanderthal-human interbreeding. To get this specific date, the researchers analyzed 59 genomes from ancient humans who lived in Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia between 2,000 years and 45,000 years ago, as well as genomes from 275 present-day humans.
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