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In November 2007, we covered research on the genetic makeup of Neanderthals showing that they carried a mutation in the melanocortin receptor gene that had never been seen in our species, leading us to conclude that we and they evolved in parallel. In the 3 years since, advances in DNA sequencing and informatics have produced the most complete Neanderthal genetic sequence to date.
Researchers extracted and sequenced bacterial DNA from bones of three Neanderthal individuals, controlling against Homo sapiens contamination. They compared the Neanderthal genome with the genomes of five modern humans. Although the samples and comparisons were relatively small and few, several important findings emerged, including …