Europe's Late Neanderthals descended from a single population, DNA analysis suggests - SLRPNK

> In the study, an international research team led by Professor Cosimo Posth at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen traced the dramatic genetic history of European Neanderthals. Researchers already had indications that Europe’s widespread earlier Neanderthal populations had largely disappeared. > The new study indicates that one localized group had survived the harsh conditions by retreating to a climate refuge [https://phys.org/news/2024-01-humans-icy-northern-europe-neanderthals.html] some 75,000 years ago in what is now southwestern France—and that the descendants of these survivors spread across Europe after 65,000 years ago. Genetically, almost all Late Neanderthals descended from this one lineage. > Posth and his team also found that these Neanderthals later suffered a sharp decline in population around 45,000 years ago. This fall in numbers [https://phys.org/news/2025-11-mathematical-neanderthal-genetic-dilution.html] was rapid, reaching a minimum around 42,000 years ago—shortly before the Neanderthals became extinct altogether. The study has been published in the journal PNAS [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2520565123]. > Genetically, Neanderthals can be clearly distinguished from modern humans, Homo sapiens, who replaced Neanderthals by around 40,000 years ago. “We have evidence that Neanderthals inhabited Europe continuously between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. However, we have only fragmentary details of their population history,” says Posth. > “So far, we know very little about the evolutionary developments that preceded their extinction.” He and his research team were therefore particularly interested in the Late Neanderthals, who lived between about 60,000 and 40,000 years ago.