Discovery that some humans are part-Neanderthal reveals the promise of comparing genomes old and new

by Rex Dalton

The worlds of ancient and modern DNA exploration have collided in spectacular fashion in the past few months. Last week saw the publication of a long-awaited draft genome of the Neanderthal, an archaic hominin from about 40,000 years ago. Just three months earlier, researchers in Denmark reported the genome of a 4,000-year-old Saqqaq Palaeo-Eskimo that was plucked from the Greenland...