Hi All,

This just came across another list. Thought you might be interested!

Sharon

> LONDON (AP)-
>      DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton is giving powerful backing to the
> theory that all humanity descended from an 'African Eve' about 100,000 to
> 200,000 years ago- and that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.
>      Genetic differences indicate the Neanderthals were a different species
> than the early humans whoswept them aside in Europe and western Asia-
> although they appear to have split from acommon ancestor a half-million
> years ago, according to German and US scientists.
>      The DNA test 'clearly lends support to this idea about our ancestry;
> that we have all come out of Africa quite recently in history", said Svante
> Paabo, who worke on the research at the Zoological Institue at the
> Universityof Munich.
>     It is a brillant, innovative piece of work. I doubt that it can be
> faulted on technical grounds", Milford H. Wolpoff, professor of anthropology
> at the Universityof Michigan. But he says the researchers have drawn hasty
> conclusions.
>    The finding were published in Cell, a journal based in Cambridge, Ma.,
> and outlined Thursday at a news conference in London. Paabo said his results
> were independently confirmed at Pennsylvania State University.
>     The Munich team took a small sample, 0.4grams, from the upper arm bone
> of a skeleton found in l857 in the Neander Valley near Duesseldorf- the
> first neanderthal skeleton ever found.