... AND ANOTHER ONE GONE...:

Modern Humans, Neanderthals May Have Interbred (E.J. Mundell, Oct 30, 2006, HealthDay News)

There may be a little Neanderthal in all of us.

That's the conclusion of anthropologists who have re-examined 30,000-year-old fossilized bones from a Romanian cave -- bones that languished in a drawer since the 1950s. [...]

"From my perspective, the replacement vs. continuity debate that raged through the 1990s is now dead," said the study's American co-author, Erik Trinkaus, a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Trinkaus comes down firmly on the side of the assimilation theory.

"To me, what happened is that the Neanderthals were [genetically] absorbed into and overwhelmed by modern humans coming into Europe from Africa, and they disappeared through this absorption," Trinkaus said.

Another species turns out to just be a variety.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 31, 2006 6:35 PM