Biology Now, 2e

318 ■ CHAPTER 17 Animals and Human Evolution

BIODIVERSITY

Italy. During this period, it’s possible that “there

was a kind of interbreeding,” says Condemi. But

if the two species interbred and had children,

what did those children look like? And why

hadn’t Condemi’s team found their bones?

Then Condemi examined the Riparo Mezzena

bones. One caught her attention. It was a

jawbone, a mandible, from a late Neanderthal

living in Italy at the same time that modern

humans had already made their way into

Europe (see Figure 17.1). But the jawbone

didn’t look like a Neanderthal’s, which has no

chin. Instead, the face of the Riparo Mezzena

individual, when reconstructed with three-

dimensional imag ing, had an intermediate

jaw, something between no chin and a strongly

projected chin. Because chins are a feature

unique to modern humans (Figure 17.15),

With a previous team, Condemi had used

fossil evidence from southern Italy to determine

that modern humans arrived on the Italian

peninsula between 45,000 and 43,000 years

ago, before the disappearance of Neanderthals.

So the two populations likely made contact in

Figure 17.15

Neanderthal and human skulls

The skull on the right is from a Neanderthal; the one on the left, from a modern human. Notice the

differences in the eyebrow ridge, forehead, and lower jaw.

Q1: Describe the difference you observe between the modern human skull’s chin and the

Neanderthal skull’s lower jaw.

Q2: What other differences do you observe between the two skulls?

Q3: Why would you expect a hybrid of Neanderthals and modern humans to have intermediate

features?

Silvana Condemi is an anthropologist and

research director at the National Center for

Scientific Research (CNRS) at Aix-Marseille

University in France. She studies the movement

of Neanderthals across Europe and how their

populations overlapped with modern humans.

SILVANA CONDEMI