When I explain my research interests to new acquaintances, I’m often asked questions like “what would you do if you met a Neanderthal?” or “do you think we’ll ever find a perfectly preserved frozen Neanderthal?

In contrast to those who resided in Siberia, Neanderthals who lived in what's now Belgium and France shortly before the species vanished seem to have been genetically diverse and healthy

Some Neanderthals living in northwestern Europe after 52,500 years ago were surprisingly diverse, suggesting that they didn't all go extinct due to inbreeding.

Neanderthal babies have always been hard to study, mostly because their remains are so rare. That scarcity has left one of the oldest arguments in human origins unsettled: were Neanderthals following a fundamentally different developmental path from the start,