Tag: Neanderthals

  • Human Brain Evolution

    Primates are our closest relatives with chimpanzees sharing almost 99% of our DNA genomes. Neanderthals are even closer to modern humans with genomes 99.7% identical to ours and with brains nearly the same size as modern humans. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and humans (Homo sapiens) were so genetically similar that successful interbreeding occurred, resulting in a […]

  • Hominins and Hominids

    Everyone is interested in their ancestors, some people are just interested much further back than others. A recent paper in Nature describes the characterization of the most complete skull fossil ever found for Australopithecus anamensis.  Anamensis is one of the 5 species of Australopithecus, the genus that is believed to have given rise to Homo […]