Complete reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton revealed

WHOLE at last. The first reconstruction of a complete Neanderthal skeleton reveals more clearly than ever the similarities and differences between us and them.

The reconstruction makes clear their larger, bell-like chest cavity and wider pelvis. Their bodies were also very compact and dwarf-like in shape, with effectively no waist, possibly as an adaptation against the cold.

Gary Sawyer of the American Museum of Natural History in New York city and Blaine Maley at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, wanted to shed light on the anatomy and stature of this cousin of modern humans, which died out nearly 30,000 years ago. They assembled the skeleton by taking casts of the most complete skeleton available, the La Ferrassie 1 specimen found in 1909 in the Dordogne valley in France. Then they filled in the blanks using casts taken from other Neanderthal collections from the same period, approximately 60,000 years ago (The Anatomical Record, Part B: The New Anatomist, vol 283B, p 23). "It's the first time any human 'ancestor' has ever been fully reconstructed," says Sawyer.

Meanwhile, the oldest fossilised primate protein to have been sequenced, taken from a Neanderthal, was last week found to be identical to the human equivalent (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0500450102).

From issue 2491 of New Scientist magazine, 19 March 2005, page 14