Declining fertility may be behind Neanderthal extinction — study

    WASHINGTON -- A small reduction in the fertility rate of young Neanderthal women over a period of thousands of years could account for the extinction of the ancient human species, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on Wednesday. Our closest human relatives lived across Europe between around 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, their disappearance coinciding with the arrival of Homo sapiens on the continent. But the reasons for that disappearance have remained an enigma: were they massacred by our forebears? The victims of a mass epidemic? Or did they die off slowly faced with competition for resources from a more adept species (our own)? Researchers at Fr...

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