The outstandingly preserved fossil know as Altamura humans is not only the most utter Neanderthal skeleton acknowledge , but also now the source of the oldest DNA from our out cousin .
Even before the latest winner , the skeleton have it away as Altamura Man had an important place in the study of human phylogenesis . Located in one of the Lamalunga cave near Altamura , Italy , the fossil was discovered in 1993 palisade by limestone and creature fossils swept in by heavy pelting . However , the Altamura humanity himself is cogitate to have settle into a well and hunger , eventually being incase in limestone .
Debate has raged over whether Altamura Man was aHomo heidelbergensis , a Neanderthal , a member ofHomo sapiens , or some kind of hybrid or unknown species . In any of those cases other thanHomo sapiens , the inauspicious individual would constitute the most complete skeleton known from a appendage of a species of thehuman genusother than ourselves . Moreover , since European Neanderthal fossils arewidespread but in general very incomplete , Altamura human race stands out as a treasure trove of info about our closest extinct congenator .
regrettably , however , the same calcite that protect the off-white has also concreted them to the cave so that they can not be removed without damage . This has also made dating the skeleton a challenge .
Altamura man has a number of feature associated with Neanderthals ( gay neanderthalenesis ) , such as the shape of his eye sockets and the back of his skull . However , the supercilium ridges are even more prominent than those of Neanderthals , lead to venture that this may have been a member of a former species .
In theJournal of Human Evolution , a gravid group of researchers reveal the first dating of the fossil and the origin of some desoxyribonucleic acid , both ensue from the recovery of a fragment of the rightscapula(shoulder blade ) .
The author resolve that Altamura man “ go to the hypodigm ofHomo neanderthalensis , with some phenetic peculiarities that come along reproducible with a chronology lay out from 172 ± 15 ka [ thousand years ago ] to 130.1 ± 1.9 ka . ” Anything other than the youngest end of this image would make this the old boorish genetic material retrieved , although still well short of the400,000 yr old Denisovan hereditary material found in northern Spain , the oldest known human DNA .
The DNA is too degraded to be sequenced with current technique . However , co - author Dr. David Caramelli of the University of Florencedescribed itas “ a highly suitable prospect for interested genomic analyses , ” which may benefit from new - genesis transmissible technologies .
The intact Neanderthal genome has already been extracted from the toe off-white of aSiberian Neanderthal , but if utile data can be extracted from Altamura piece , it will provide contrast brainstorm into the European arm of our extinct relatives , as well as an earlier stage of their phylogeny . While traits we associate with Neanderthals first appear as far back as600,000 years ago , on-key Neanderthals appear in the fogy record 200,000 - 250,000 long time ago .
H / T : LiveScience
