Neanderthals and Humans

So – we now have data and papers relating to some genome sequencing of DNA apparently from a Neanderthal fossil. I must say, even though I am a skeptic of much of the work on ancient DNA, I find the idea of sequencing the genome of a Neanderthal to be pretty cool. Perhaps more importantly than the scientific uses of this information, the sequencing is a brilliant public relations coup for genome sequencing. It is also a potentially useful tool in science and evolution education.

I will spare everyone my worries the scientific value of this work for now and am just using this post to collect links that I have found to be useful regarding Neandethal ancient DNA.

• Open Access Review on Ancient DNA (from PLoS Biology)
• NY Times article by Nick Wade from July
• Smithsonian Site on Neanderthals
• Neanderthal Museum
• Wikipedia entry on Neanderthals
• Smithsonian Magazine article on Svante Paabo

I will add more links in the next few days – or people can add them with comments

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen