The astonishingly well-preserved nasal cavity of a Neanderthal in Italy has finally settled one of the great debates in palaeoanthropology by completely contradicting our assumptions regarding the facial anatomy of our extinct relative. Previously, scientists thought that Neanderthals possessed specific structures in their noses that helped them deal with cold environments, yet we now know that these features did not actually exist. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Until now, no one had ever actually seen the inner workings of the Neanderthal nasal cavity , since the delicate bones inside the nose are too fragile to survive in the fossil record. However, researchers finally got their first glimpse at this morphology

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