Scladina cave in the Meuse Basin, Belgium, was discovered in 1971 and has for more than 20 years been the object of much painstaking archaeological research
The site has also unearthed the bones of a Neanderthal child aged about ten. Thanks to the outstanding state of preservation of the remains and sediments protecting them, this site has become a point of reference for knowledge about the climatic evolution of the northwestern regions of the European continent
Scientists have recently recovered DNA, extracted from the tooth of the Neanderthal child that lived 100,000 years ago - the oldest human-type DNA so far. Initial finding suggests our distant cousins were more genetically diverse than once thought. |