PARIS, FRANCE—According to a statement released by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), an international team of scientists led by paleoanthropologists Antoine Balzeau of CNRS and Asier Gómez-Olivencia of the University of the Basque Country has reevaluated the remains of a Neanderthal child who was approximately two years old at the time of death. Some scholars have questioned whether the child’s remains, discovered in the 1970s, had been intentionally buried where they were unearthed in the La Ferrassie rock shelter in Dordogne, France. Six other Neanderthal skeletons were uncovered at the site in the early twentieth century. First, the researchers identified an additional 47 bones belonging to the child’s skeleton among the materials held at France’s National Archaeology Museum. Then they returned to the rock shelter with the 40-year-old excavation notes to understand the site and its layers of sediments and animal bones. The researchers determined that the child’s body had been placed in a purposely dug pit, where they found a tiny Neanderthal bone that has been dated to 41,000 years ago. To read about a Neanderthal child's tooth recovered in the Zagros Mountains, go to "World Roundup: Iran."
