Carl Zimmer’s Matter column over at the New York Times has an interesting article about Neanderthals.  Analysis of ancient DNA of Neanderthal bones from a cave in Siberia has led researchers to believe they have found a family unit consisting of a father, daughter, and multiple cousins.  The bones were discovered in 2007 with a large trove of stone tools and butchered bison bones.  The research was published in the journal Nature by a team that included Svante Pääbo, who recently won the Noble Prize for his work on ancient DNA.

The study was carried out by a team of researchers that included Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist who for 25 years has been uncovering the secrets of Neanderthals, from extracting their DNA from cave floor dirt to replicating their brain cells. Earlier this month, he won the Nobel Prize for his efforts.

“I would not have thought we would be able to detect a father and daughter from bone fragments, or Neanderthal DNA in cave sediments, or any other of the things that are now becoming almost routine,” said Dr. Pääbo, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “It has been an amazing journey.”

For his first study of Neanderthal DNA in 1997, Dr. Pääbo and his colleagues drilled into a skull cap discovered in 1856 in a German quarry. Over the next few years, they gathered more DNA from other museum specimens, collecting hints about the evolution of Neanderthals and their links with living humans. Eventually, Dr. Pääbo and his collaborators dug up enough ancient DNA to reconstruct the entire Neanderthal genome.