Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction

Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations' structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. Here, we report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual, nicknamed "Thorin," from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France, and his genome. These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50-42 thousand years ago. Thorin's genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals. Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions. These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

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Publication Details

Journal
Cell Genomics
Published
2024-09-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100593
Citations
35
Primary Topic
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
130.17

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article

Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction

Martin Sikora, Andaine Seguin‐Orlando, Michael Buckley, Hélène Coqueugniot et al.
35 citations
Cell Genomics
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
130.17
article

Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction

Martin Sikora, Andaine Seguin‐Orlando, Michael Buckley, Hélène Coqueugniot, Lee J. Arnold, Ludovic Slimak, Jason Lewis, Clément Zanolli, Thibaut Devièse, Thomas Higham, Xavier Muth, Benjamin Duployer, Renaud Joannes‐Boyau, Marine Frouin, Olivier Dutour, Christophe Tenailleau, Hervé Bocherens, Laure Metz, Pascale Yvorra, Tharsika Vimala, Martina Demuro, Hubert Camus, Daniel Comeskey
article en
35 citations

Abstract

Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations' structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. Here, we report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual, nicknamed "Thorin," from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France, and his genome. These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50-42 thousand years ago. Thorin's genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals. Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions. These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Cell GenomicsVol. 4(9)
University of Copenhagen (DK), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), University of Vienna (AT), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (FR), Université de Bordeaux (FR), École Pratique des Hautes Études (FR), Collège de France (FR), Aix-Marseille Université (FR), University of Manchester (GB), Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (DE), Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (FR), Laboratoire Méditerranéen de Préhistoire Europe Afrique (FR), Centre de Recherche et d’Enseignement de Géosciences de l’Environnement (FR), De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (FR), Lundbeck Foundation (DK), Craft Technologies (United States) (US), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche et d’Ingénierie des Matériaux (FR), AMIS - Laboratoire d'anthropologie moléculaire et imagerie de synthèse (FR), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (FR), The University of Adelaide (AU), Stony Brook University (US), Southern Cross University (AU)
National Research Foundation, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, Lundbeckfonden, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, H. Lundbeck A/S
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
130.17
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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