Studies reveal the late history of Neanderthals

paper describes the genomes of five Neanderthals who lived between 47,000 and 39,000 years ago, also known as late Neanderthals. The results were published online March 22
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little is known about the genetic diversity of Neanderthals, or the relationship between late Neanderthal populations and early modern humans before they eventually disappeared.
Mateja Hajdinjak of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues sequenced the genomes of five late Neanderthals using neanderthal bone and tooth fragments found in Belgium, France, Croatia and the Russian Caucasus. By comparing them with the genomes of other Neanderthals, the authors speculate that all late Neanderthals had a common ancestor from Siberia, separated from their common ancestor about 150,000 years ago, and that their kinship was related to geography.
's analysis suggests that the Neanderthal genes contained in early modern humans came mainly from one or more Neanderthal populations that were isolated from the late Neanderthals analyzed by the institute at least 70,000 years ago, before the latter populations themselves were separated.
by comparing the genomes of the five men with those of an earlier Neanderthal from the Caucasus, the authors believe that there was a population turnover in the Caucasus or across Europe in the late Neanderthal history. The occurrence coincides with a period of intense climate fluctuations between 60,000 and 24,000 years ago, when extreme cold weather in northern Europe could have led to the extinction of native populations, after which populations in southern Europe or Western Asia re-colonized. (Source: Science Network Feng Weiwei)