Neanderthals.

Scientists claim some Neanderthals had red hair and fair skin

Holger Roempler of Harvard University and the University of Leipzig, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have challenged the commonly-accepted image of Neanderthals, claiming that some of the extinct hominids could have had fair skin and red hair.

Roempler, Lalueza-Fox and Hofreiter have been studying DNA samples taken from Neanderthal fossils found in Italy and Spain. During the course of their study, the researchers had found a mutation that can affect skin and hair pigmentation.

This mutation, according to Roempler et al, reduces the function of the gene known as melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), which is one of the key proteins regulating hair and skin color. The catch here is that a slightly different mutation in that gene causes red hair and fair skin in modern humans.

Buoyed by last year's discovery that Neanderthals also possessed the gene known to influence modern speech in humans, Roempler, Lalueza-Fox, Hofreiter and the other members of their team have been continuously working to analyze Neanderthal DNA-dubbed as "the blueprint of life" in the hopes of better understanding these ancient people.

Neanderthals

Neanderthals trekked all the way into Siberia

By Will Dunham.

Neanderthals, the stocky kin of modern humans, were far more widespread geographically than previously thought, with some trekking into southern Siberia before vanishing about 30,000 years ago, scientists said on Monday.

Researchers led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that Neanderthals spread 1,250 miles further east than scientists had commonly believed.

The scientists used genetic tests to determine that three fragmentary bones previously found in the Altai region of southern Siberia were indeed those of a Neanderthal. They also confirmed that a child's skeletal remains from Teshik-Tash in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan were from a Neanderthal.

Scientists previously had established that Neanderthals lived in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia before their disappearance, perhaps after some type of competition with modern humans who had migrated out of Africa.

"Intriguingly, their presence in southern Siberia raises the possibility that they may have been present even farther to the east, in Mongolia and China," the researchers wrote in the journal Nature.

Since the discovery in the 19th century of Neanderthal remains in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, scientists have struggled to understand just who were these stockily built archaic humans and why did they die off.

Scientists also are aiming to clarify the evolutionary relationship between modern humans, who left Africa and quickly spread around the world starting roughly 100,000 years ago, and Neanderthals.

"They are our closest relatives," Paabo said in a telephone interview. "If you saw one in the street, she or he would strike you as very robust and muscular, with a big brow ridge and bigger musculature. But they had, for example, just as big a brain as we have."

Traits typical of Neanderthals appear in remains dating from 400,000 years ago, and Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, the researchers said.

Paabo, a leader in the field of ancient DNA research, also is instrumental in an effort launched last year to complete a first draft of the Neanderthal genome.

The fact that their geographic range was even bigger than previously thought makes their disappearance all the more mysterious, Paabo said.