Tag

Bottleneck

All articles tagged with #bottleneck

Ancient Bottleneck Shaped Neanderthal Lineage Across Eurasia
science1 month ago

Ancient Bottleneck Shaped Neanderthal Lineage Across Eurasia

A new PNAS study shows Neanderthals underwent a severe genetic bottleneck tens of thousands of years before their extinction, drastically reducing genetic diversity across Eurasia. The finding suggests their decline was gradual and climate-driven, with isolated refugia and fragmented populations, rather than a single catastrophe from modern humans, and helps explain their eventual disappearance even as interbreeding left a Neanderthal genetic legacy in modern humans.

Ancient Human Survival: Escaping Climate Extinction 900,000 Years Ago
anthropologyarchaeology2 years ago

Ancient Human Survival: Escaping Climate Extinction 900,000 Years Ago

A new study has found that a mass migration of humans out of Africa occurred around 900,000 years ago, coinciding with a population bottleneck that brought modern humanity's ancestors to the brink of extinction. This migration was likely a response to a severe climate trigger during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which caused arid conditions in Africa and prompted early Homo populations to adapt or migrate to avoid extinction. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide insight into how ancient humans managed to escape climate-induced extinction.