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Results tagged “Neanderthals” from NatGeo News Watch

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As days grow shorter and temperatures subside, it's time to consider the winter wardrobe -- especially if you spent the summer naked.

For the cavewoman 28,000 years ago the selection was limited: skins, furs, perhaps something woven from the tall grass.

Stone Age clothing, if it can be called that, most likely served only to trap body heat. There probably wasn't much intended to make a fashion statement beyond body paint.

But what if the thoroughly modern designers of the hit television show Project Runway could conjure up a range of outfits for the on-the-move woman with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle? What would they do with the available materials?

 

 

 

 Sketch by Blayne Walsh, Project Runway

 

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Reconstruction by Kennis & Kennis/Photo by Joe McNally/NGS

Meet Wilma, the first reconstruction of a Neanderthal created using evidence from fossil anatomy and ancient DNA.

Neanderthals were a species of human that became extinct 28,000 years ago. The lifesize model was created to illustrate "The Last of the Neanderthals," the cover article in the October 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The article, written by Steve Hall and photographed by David Liittschwager and Joe McNally, explores what caused Neanderthals, who dominated Eurasia for more than 200,000 years, to vanish in the Ice Age, while our modern human ancestors survived.

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Three-dimensional computer-assisted reconstructions of Neanderthal infants based on fossils found in Russia and Syria (left) suggests that our closest human relatives had brains as large as ours at birth and larger than ours as adults.

The finding indicates that we and the Neanderthals inherited the pattern of early brain size and development from a yet unknown common human ancestor, researchers who did the reconstruction say. Still largely unknown is how this pattern of brain development arose during evolution.

The research also sheds light on the similarities and differences in the life histories of modern humans and Neanderthals: the timing of major events in an individual's life, such as gestation time, age at sexual maturity, and age at death. The differences could have given modern humans an evolutionary advantage, the study indicates.

Image courtesy of M. Ponce de León and C. Zollikofer, University of Zurich

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