Experts suggest Neanderthals are our closest extinct relative. In many ways, we’re alike: We are both hunter gatherers who have mastered the use of stone tools and weapons. But experts also agree that we have our differences.
Those differences are seen in a split from a common ancestor more than half a million years ago. Still, the species that connects us has long eluded scientists.
Experts thought Homo heidelbergensis was the missing link — an early human species known to be the first to build shelters — but newer research has called this theory into question.
The age of H. heidelbergensis fossils revealed that some of the specimens were too young to be the common ancestor, says Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the London Natural History Museum. Rather, H. heidelbergensis was more likely a contemporary of modern humans and Neanderthals, not an ancestral link, says Stringer.
"Frankly, we no longer ...
