Europeans may be closer to their Neanderthal cousins than was previously thought.
Breeding with now-extinct Neanderthals is known to have left its traces in the DNA of modern Europeans.
This mingling of the two human sub-species was thought to have taken place long ago in Africa, before our ancestors spread across the globe, but new evidence suggests Homo sapiens and Neanderthals got together much more recently.
Scientists have shown that the genetic similarity between Neanderthals and non-African modern human populations must have arisen after interbreeding in Europe and Asia.
The research involved dividing up the genetic code of each sub-species to calculate the statistical likelihood of distant or recent interbreeding.
Read the full, original story: Neanderthal DNA link ‘more recent’
