Ancient DNA moves Neandertals eastward
By Bruce Bower
Neandertals, ancient humanlike denizens of Europe and the Middle East with controversial evolutionary links to Homo sapiens, inhabited areas at least 2,000 kilometers further east than researchers have commonly assumed, according to a new DNA analysis of previously recovered fossils.
Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues extracted sequences of mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited solely from the mother, from fossils found in Uzbekistan and in southern Siberia.