Midfacial Morphology and Neandertal–Modern Human Interbreeding

Abstract

Ancient DNA from, Neandertal and modern human fossils, and comparative morphological analyses of them, reveal a complex history of interbreeding between these lineages and the introgression of Neandertal genes into modern human genomes. Despite substantial increases in our knowledge of these events, the timing and geographic location of hybridization events remain unclear. Six measures of facial size and shape, from regional samples of Neandertals and early modern humans, were used in a multivariate exploratory analysis to try to identify regions in which early modern human facial morphology was more similar to that of Neandertals, which might thus represent regions of greater introgression of Neandertal genes. The results of canonical variates analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis suggest important affinities in facial morphology between both Middle and Upper Paleolithic early modern humans of the Near East with Neandertals, highlighting the importance of this region for interbreeding between the two lineages.

Paleontology in the 21st Century

“…New methods are being used to test hypotheses rooted in analyses of DNA. Churchill et al [ 29 ] seeks to test the idea of interbreeding between Neandertal and modern humans in Europe and Asia, proposed in earlier DNA studies [ 30 , 31 ] by comparing facial size and shape parameters that may reflect the expression of Neandertal genes, using morphometric techniques.…”

“…Phylogenetically and physiologically informative tissues were probed by synchrotron [ 34 ] to support the previous identification of reproductive tissues in dinosaurs [ 35 , 36 ]. Technologies continue to broaden not only the type of questions to be asked, but the type of fossils we can analyze, from coprolites [ 33 ], teeth [ 37 ], and invertebrates [ 22 , 38 , 39 ] to dinosaurs [ 25 , 34 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ], mammals [ 45 ], and our own lineage [ 29 , 32 , 46 ].…”