DNA extracted from the skeleton of a man who lived in Russia about 37,000 years ago is giving scientists new insights into the genetic history of Europeans including interbreeding that took place with Neanderthals more than 50,000 years ago.
Scientists said in research published in the journal Science on Thursday that they used DNA taken from the man's left tibia to sequence the genome of one of the earliest known Europeans.
Genetic analysis of the Kostenki man, named after the Russian village where his skeleton was first unearthed 60 years ago, enabled a more precise estimate of when Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals who had colonized the region thousands of years earlier, the scientists said.