TOULOUSE, FRANCE—According to a Science News report, an isolated population of Neanderthals has been identified by Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and Martin Sikora of the University of Copenhagen. The DNA was obtained from the remains of a male Neanderthal, dubbed “Thorin” after a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, that were discovered in 2015 in a natural depression in France’s Grotte Mandrin rock shelter. Although Thorin’s fossils have been dated to between 50,000 and 42,000 years ago, when his DNA was compared to samples from other Neanderthals, ancient modern humans, and modern people, it was found to resemble the DNA of Neanderthals who lived some 105,000 years ago. Analysis of Thorin’s genome also detected a high percentage of DNA segments containing consecutive pairs of identical gene variants, suggesting that his ancestors had been close relatives, and likely came from a small population that split from a larger group and was isolated for about 50,000 years. Slimak and Sikora think that Thorin’s lineage of Neanderthals may have lived in small networks of closely related communities, but it is not clear why they may have avoided other Neanderthal groups. The researchers are currently working to confirm the age of the fossils and identify additional potential members of this lineage. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Cell Genomics. To read about the sequencing of the first complete Neanderthal genome, go to "Ancient DNA Revolution."
