The Neanderthalome

Posted 12 February 2009 by Reed A. Cartwright

Ever wonder what a Neanderthal looked like? Well now you can clone one and find out. A Neanderthal genome has been released.

5 Comments

James F · 12 February 2009

Soon this will be a reality....

But seriously, I know how hard Svante Paabo was pushing to have it released on Darwin's 200th birthday, so major kudos to his group!

Reed A. Cartwright · 12 February 2009

I love that commercial, I think its the best one they did in that series.

Peter Henderson · 13 February 2009

In a BBC programme a while ago, TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh was made up to look like a Neanderthal (based on what we know about Neanderthal fossil skulls). He subsequently went on a walkabout sporting his new appearance. While he did attract the occasional stare, most people in the street simply ignored him. You can have a look at what he looked like as a Neanderthal here:

http://trickery.net/bb/showthread.php?t=16267

stevaroni · 13 February 2009

You can have a look at what he looked like as a Neanderthal here:

If he had shaved, gotten a haircut, and had access to a good dentist growing up, there wouldn't have been that much about him that was dramatically out of the normal, other than the somewhat brooding forehead and a big schnoz. Then again, Owen Wilson has a big nose, and it works for him. And now to think of it, this is London we're talking about, maybe the dentist thing isn't so important either...

raven · 15 February 2009

At roughly 3.2 billion base pairs,[1] the Neanderthal genome is about the size of the modern human genome; according to preliminary sequences, modern human and Neanderthal DNA appear to be 99.5% identical.

It is interesting that the relatedness between any 2 modern humans can be as low as...99.5%. Clearly they were closely related to us.