This is one of the loveliest fossils I’ve ever seen. They are the bones of a Neanderthal, found in a cave in southern Italy, and although they’ve been calcified by mineral-rich water trickling through the cave where they were found, it’s an almost complete skeleton, with the bones all intact.
That’s the grisly part of the story. This person apparently fell into a hole in the karst landscape and was trapped — he’s presumed to have starved to death there. There were no predators able to reach him, either, so his body decayed in place, his bones slumped into a pile, and the slowly accumulating limestone locked everything into a fused lump…until cave explorers shone a light into his tomb and saw his skull looking back at them in 1993.
Now we know how long his bones had laid there undiscovered: about 150,000 years. It’s a little late to inform his family of his fate, especially since his subspecies has been extinct for about 40,000 years.
At least we’re learning some things from his sad demise. The bones are literally fused into the cave wall, making extraction nearly impossible, and there are some hot arguments against even trying. But recently a small part of one shoulder blade was cut loose and analyzed.
The sample was dated, which is how we know how long ago this individual suffered his unfortunate end. Further, some attempts to extract DNA from the sample have been successful — it’s blown to bits, but enough intact fragments of mitochondrial DNA were found to compare with other specimens: he’s definitely Neanderthal, with some regional anatomical peculiarities, and his DNA is distinct from that of modern human and Denisovan populations. But he’s old, very old — keep in mind that the earlier sequenced Neanderthal DNA was about 50,000 years old. This fellow is separated by a distance in time from other Neanderthal DNA specimens that is twice as great as that separating us from the established Neanderthal genome.
Of course, that makes sequencing this genome even more interesting. Also technically far more difficult, maybe impossible.
But here’s what we know right now:
Overall, the results of our morphometric and the paleogenetic analyses concur in indicating that the skeleton from Altamura belongs to a Neanderthal. In addition, using U/Th dating we were able to provide the first range of dates for the specimen, between 130±2 ka and 172±15 ka.
Nevertheless, some features exhibited by the skeleton and observed in situ (on the cranium, in particular, as summarized in the Introduction) differ from the morphology known among the typical representatives of Homo neanderthalensis, while they appear consistent with the pre-Würmian age we obtained. Metrical variables show that the scapula-humeral joint is closer to the morphotype usually referred to the so-called “early Neanderthals,” including specimens such as those from Saccopastore, or Apidima. In addition, geometric morphometric analysis of the SGF from Altamura suggests some peculiarities of this small piece of bone, while (consistent with the mtDNA data) the same analysis strengthens the notion that the Neanderthal morphology was essentially present in the late Middle Pleistocene.
Finally, it is of great interest that mtDNA was sufficiently preserved to permit paleogenetic analysis. The results of the explorative approach used here have shown that the sample contained endogenous DNA (although highly fragmented) with a typical Neanderthal haplotype; moreover, there was no evidence of modern human contamination in the bone fragment, at least not at the mtDNA level. For these reasons, the Altamura skeleton should be considered a good candidate for more innovative genomic analyses, like capture approaches or ultra-deep shotgun sequencing, especially when we consider that Altamura represents the most ancient Neanderthal from which endogenous DNA has been retrieved so far.
Lari M, Di Vincenzo F, Borsato A, Ghirotto S, Micheli M, Balsamo C, Collina C, De Bellis G, Frisia S, Giacobini G, Gigli E, Hellstrom JC, Lannino A, Modi A, Pietrelli A, Pilli E, Profico A, Ramirez O, Rizzi E, Vai S, Venturo D, Piperno M, Lalueza-Fox C, Barbujani G, Caramelli D, Manzi G (2015) The Neanderthal in the karst: First dating, morphometric, and paleogenetic data on the fossil skeleton from Altamura (Italy). J Hum Evol pii: S0047-2484(15)00026-3. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.02.007
Could you include a link to the article, please? Thank you!
He looks a bit like an octopus in the picture
Does that look like a fossilised octopus arm just below the skull!?!?
That alone should justify PZ’s delight.
Damn you karmacat and your fast typing skills!!!!
What do you call trypophobia but with bumps instead of holes?
This could teach us a lot about the early Neanderthals and their development. His bad luck. our good fortune.
That is looking very like the Pirates of the Caribbean Davy Jones scenes, isn’t it?
I’m a little curious as to what methodology produces a range where the error bars don’t overlap.
Why not? I haven’t read the link to the original, but I am trying to speculate why one would not attempt to remove the full skeleton?
– Respect for the dead? Then why attempt to extract Lucy and such
– Ruining the Skeleton? Anything retrieved will be more than what can be done just by surface examination
I’m assuming one test gives an upper bound, another gives a lower bound, each test has its own error bars?
@numerobis #10
Yes, I understand that, but there is no actual number that fits both tests. So either one or both tests are wrong, or one or both tests has severely underestimated their uncertainty values.
Ariaflame @11:
No, you’re still not understanding that. One test gives an upper bound, the other gives a lower bound. It’s good that the errors of one don’t overlap the errors of the other. That way there is a whole range of numbers that fit both limits.
Also, you could, y’know, read the paper. They dated the calcite overgrowths, which happened in ranges. They can determine that the individual died between two of the mineral growth periods, and those two periods were dated as listed. Therefore they know the individual died between those two periods.
I thought they had determined that most modern Homo sapiens sapiens most likely had some extent of neanderthalensis ancestry. Which would technically mean that the two subspecies had essentially fused back into one species.
One thing I’ve wondered about: If interbreeding was possible between sapiens sapiens and sapiens neanderthalensis, but archaeological evidence shows places with strata demonstrating distinctively separate subspecies occupation, going back and forth, does this suggest that Homo sapiens has an inherent tendency toward serious tribalism and racism?
Not that I’m trying to be apologetic for the racism that we clearly demonstrate within our species. Or that I’m actually trying to make a serious scientific claim or hypothesis. I’m not an anthropologist, and the extent of my evolutionary bio is TA-ing an undergrad lab on the subject.
You’re right. I probably should have read the paper. I apologise, I can only plead that it’s the middle of the night here and my cold has made my head a bit too fuzzy.
That they were tests of two things that may have come from different temporal periods makes sense.
That’s pretty common, to report an upper and lower bound. If you can’t date the actual specimen, but instead date a stratum below it and one above it (or in this case, multiple rounds of calcite deposition), you end up with two numbers that bracket the age of the specimen itself.
By the way, if you click on that image, you get a 1600×1200 pixel copy — it’s my current desktop image.
Donnie #9
Unless it’s salvage work, archaeologists rarely remove everything from a site.
It’s partly a assumption that Future Archaeologists will have Superior Technology.
I know these remains are in a cave, not underwater, but when I first saw the pictures of them, “Ariel’s Song” from The Tempest immediately came to mind:
That is a beautiful image. I vote for leaving it right there, unless somebody is planning to ceremoniously take it up to daylight, then rebury it according to best guess at Neanderthal practices.
My best understanding of the ancestry/relatedness issue is that the Neanderthal left Africa and adapted to Europe. Then, some time later, some modern Africans went up into Europe and mixed with the locals a bit, before mostly replacing them. The new Europeans kept the Neanderthal characteristics best suited for Europe, namely pale skin and more hair. You know, external features.
My point is that most of what Europeans consider as making them different from Africans is all Neanderthal. And all superficial.
Africans, as a general group, don’t have the Neanderthal. But speaking of Africans as a general group is wrong. There is more genetic diversity within Africa than outside of it. Even sub-Saharan Africa alone, the part least likely to have Neanderthal genes, has more diversity.
Sorry, I have read one too many references to modern humans having Neanderthal genes, when most of us don’t. Yeah, there are some in the pool, but it is over in the European side.
(There is a pun about European in the pool, somewhere there.)
chigau (違う)
17 April 2015 at 10:43 am
Okay. I can understand that. Like when the archaeologists raided the middle east for artifacts. Not an exact parallel, but leave shit alone for future generations to study with improved technology. Or, more succinctly, don’t fuck with shit in case you destroy it. Of course, I did read your Superior Technology with scare quotes making it sound like a pronouncement from a transhumanist.
Large version’s now my desktop background. It’s a little busy, but what the hell.
Menyambal @ 20
The European mutations for pale skin are a bit more recent than that. Whatever coloring the Neanderthals had, European light-skin alleles pop up later:
Mellow Monkey, thanks. That is interesting and does make sense.
@13 It’s my understanding that neanderthalensis and sapiens didn’t fuse, there was just some horizontal gene transfer between them.
“Species” are a fuzzy concept to begin with, but lots of them experience some levels of hybridization with close relatives while still being distinct species. If there’s a small minority of haplotypes in a genome, we generally think it’s horizontal transfer (or deep coalescence), and not the collapse of 2 species into 1.
Thank you, stwriley. That was my first thought too. But I could only remember fragments of Prospero’s little cheer-up speech.
I like the Bones reference in the paper title, nice touch. :)