Skip to main content

First adult Neanderthal skull

From -  Natural History Museum (London)

By Lisa Hendry,


               Adult female Neanderthal skull from Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar.

One of the highlight specimens in our Human Evolution gallery is the fossil skull known as Gibraltar 1. It is the first adult Neanderthal skull ever discovered.

Model-maker Jez Gibson-Harris and acoustics researcher Anna Barney join human origins expert Professor Chris Stringer to tell the skull's story and explore what our ancient human relative was like.

Initially unrecognised

The skull was found in 1848 in a quarry in Gibraltar. Its significance wasn't recognised at first. But eight years later amateur naturalist Johann Fuhlrott identified a similar skull and additional remains in the Neander Valley in Germany. In 1864, it was named as a new species of human, Homo neanderthalensis.

The sensation this caused meant the first skull was revisited, and it too was found to be a Neanderthal fossil.

Who were the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals are one of our closest ancient human relatives. In fact, genetic data suggest we share a common ancestor. Neanderthals began to evolve in Europe and Asia while our own species was evolving in Africa.

Thanks to hundreds of fossils unearthed in the past 160 years, and recent DNA evidence, scientists have been able to build up a detailed picture of what Neanderthals looked like.

You can examine a scientifically accurate life-size Neanderthal model in the new gallery.

Their short and stocky physique was suited to the cold environments they evolved in. Distinctive hefty brow ridges and a large nose dominated their face.

We know from fossils - including the Museum's Swanscombe skull specimen, which contains imprints of the folds and blood vessels on the brain's surface - that Neanderthals' brains were as big as ours but shaped differently.

Undoubtedly intelligent and able to communicate, they were innovative toolmakers and skilful hunters.

One of the last Neanderthals?

Physical evidence of Neanderthals ends around 40,000 years ago. Two main factors may have contributed to their extinction: an unstable climate and competition from another human species (us).

Fossils and archaeological evidence indicate that Gibraltar may have been one of the Neanderthals' last refuges. The area has had a mild and stable climate for the last 125,000 years, unlike northern Europe, where extreme cold stages made the land uninhabitable at times.

The Gibraltar 1 fossil is thought to be about 50,000 years old, but the dating isn’t very precise at the moment. Museum scientists are working with dating and DNA labs to accurately calculate the age and recover part of this Neanderthal's genome.

If successful, the specimen will be the most southerly Neanderthal for which we have DNA. It may help to answer questions as to whether Mediterranean Neanderthals were genetically different to Neanderthals from the north.

The skull that Charles Darwin studied and called 'wonderful' back in the nineteenth century still has secrets to reveal.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Homo sapiens outlast all other human species?

  From - Live Science By  Mindy Weisberger Edited by - Amal Udawatta Reproductions of skulls from a Neanderthal (left), Homo sapiens (middle) and Australopithecus afarensis (right)   (Image credit: WHPics, Paul Campbell, and Attie Gerber via Getty Images; collage by Marilyn Perkins) Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the  human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins.  There were at least nine  Homo  species — including  H. sapiens  —  distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's  National Museum of Nat ural History  in Washington, D.C. One by one, all except  H. sapiens  disappeared.  Neanderthals  and a  Homo  group known as the  Denisovans  lived alongside...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Comet SWAN Now Visible in Small Scopes

     From :- Sky & Telescope  By :- Bob King  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta This spectacular image of Comet SWAN (C/2025 F2) was taken on April 6th and shows a bright, condensed coma 5′ across and dual ion tails. The longer one extends for 2° in PA 298° and the other 30′ in PA 303°. Details: 11"/ 2.2 RASA and QHY600 camera. Michael Jaeger Amateur astronomers have done it again — discovered a comet. Not by looking through a telescope but through close study of  publicly released, low-resolution images  taken by the  Solar Wind Anisotropies  (SWAN) camera on the orbiting  Solar and Heliospheric Observatory  (SOHO). On March 29th, Vladimir Bezugly of Ukraine was the first to report a moving object in SWAN photos taken the week prior. Michael Mattiazzo of Victoria, Australia, independently found "a pretty obvious comet" the same day using the same images, noting that the object was about 11th magnitude and appeared to be brightening. R...
Post a Comment
Read more

The last lunar eclipse of the year will be visible in Sri Lanka

                                                                             "blood moon." Amal Udawatta The final lunar eclipse of 2025 is scheduled to take place on the night of September 7. This lunar eclipse is significant because over seventy-seven percent (77%) of the world's population will be able to see it. If you are in Asia, Australia, Africa, or Europe, you will have the opportunity to witness this eclipse. According to the provided map, the countries highlighted in red and black will experience a total lunar eclipse. Residents in these areas will be able to view every phase of the eclipse from beginning to end. Since Sri Lanka is located within this range, it will also have a clear view of the total lunar eclipse. The Saros number for this total lunar eclipse is 128, and its total d...
Post a Comment
Read more