A Neanderthal woman from Chagyrskaya Cave

The researchers extracted the DNA from bone powder and sequenced it to high quality. They estimate that the female Neanderthal lived 60,000-80,000 years ago. From the variation in the genome they estimate that she and other Siberian Neanderthals lived in small groups of less than 60 individuals. The researchers also show that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal was more closely related to the Croatian than to the other Siberian Neanderthal which lived some 40,000 years before the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal. This shows that Neanderthal populations from the West at some point replaced other Neanderthal populations in Siberia.

"We also found that genes expressed in the striatum of the brain during adolescence showed more changes that altered the resulting amino acid when compared to other areas of the brain," says Fabrizio Mafessoni, lead author of the study. The results suggest that the striatum -- a part of the brain which coordinates various aspects of cognition, including planning, decision-making, motivation and reward perception -- may have played a unique role in Neanderthals.