It’s a somewhat uncomfortable reality that Homo sapiens interbred with their closest relatives, the "sister species" Neanderthals, multiple times during their overlapping history. This rampant prehistoric mingling didn’t seem to harm our species much – traces of Neanderthal DNA still quietly live in some people today – although more research suggests that these repeated encounters may have spelled trouble for the Neanderthals themselves. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

In a new paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, researchers from the University of Zurich argue that the hybrid offspring of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have been imperiled by a single gene variant. This problem bled into the wider Neandertha

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