RT Journal Article
T1 No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans
A1 Gómez Robles, Aida
A1 Bermúdez de Castro, José María
A1 Arsuaga Ferreras, Juan Luis
A1 Carbonell i Roura, Eudald
A1 Polly, P. David
AB A central problem in paleoanthropology is the identity of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans ([N-MH]LCA). Recently developed analytical techniques now allow this problem to be addressed using a probabilistic morphological framework. This study provides a quantitative reconstruction of the expected dental morphology of the [N-MH]LCA and an assessment of whether known fossil species are compatible with this ancestral position. We show that no known fossil species is a suitable candidate for being the [N-MH]LCA and that all late Early and Middle Pleistocene taxa from Europe have Neanderthal dental affinities, pointing to the existence of a European clade originated around 1 Ma. These results are incongruent with younger molecular divergence estimates and suggest at least one of the following must be true: (i) European fossils and the [N-MH]LCA selectively retained primitive dental traits; (ii) molecular estimates of the divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans are underestimated; or (iii) phenotypic divergence and speciation between both species were decoupled such that phenotypic differentiation, at least in dental morphology, predated speciation.
PB National Academy of Sciences
SN 0027-8424
YR 2013
FD 2013-11-05
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/34443
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/34443
LA eng
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 8 abr 2025