Dating Neanderthals
TOM Higham has spent most of his life dating Neanderthals.
The Oxford University Professor of archaeological science is a radiocarbon bone dating specialist, best known for his work in dating the Neanderthal extinction and the arrival of modern humans in Europe.
He was at his alma mater, Otago Boys’ High School, yesterday to talk about his work and revealed he was among a group of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who recently made a major discovery in human evolution.
The group sequenced the genome of an ancient hominin woman from Siberia and discovered she had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
Until 40,000 years ago, at least two groups of hominins inhabited Eurasia — Neanderthals in the west and Denisovans in the east.
Scientists knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans occasionally had children together, but they never thought they would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of the two groups.
The ancient individual was represented by only a single small bone fragment, which was found in 2012 at Denisova Cave (Russia) by Russian archaeologists.
It was taken to Leipzig for genetic analyses after it was identified as a hominin bone, based on its protein composition.
Prof Higham’s analysis helped show Neanderthals migrated between western and eastern Eurasia, tens of thousands of years before their disappearance, and detected many instances of interactions between Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Prof Higham’s visit also aimed to inspire Otago Boys’ High School pupils to follow their dreams.
‘‘This is the first time I’ve come back to the school. I was here between 1979 and 1983, and this is a great opportunity for me to come back and give these boys some of the benefits of my experience.
‘‘My advice to them is to work really hard at what you really enjoy and follow your dreams.
‘‘Don’t take any step backwards as the final answer. Keep persevering and don’t do what other people tell you to do. Try to do what you really enjoy doing.’’