Scientists said on Monday a jawbone unearthed in Romania, of a man who lived about 40,000 years ago, boasts the most Neanderthal ancestry ever seen in a member of our species. The finding is revising scientists' understanding of when and where humans and Neanderthals interbred, as it suggests humans had sex with Neanderthals more recently than was previously known. The new analysis focuses on a jawbone from Oase 1, an early modern human found in Peștera cu Oase ("Cave with Bones") in southwestern Romania in 2002. "Modern humans arrive in Europe after 43,000 years ago, and Neanderthals went extinct by 39,000 years ago," Reich said. Evidence of interbreeding 
 
 The new finding builds on work led by Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Harvard University's David Reich, which, in 2010, resulted in the first Neanderthal genome ever sequenced. The robust, large-browed Neanderthals prospered across Europe and Asia from about 350,000 years ago till shortly after 40,000 years ago, disappearing in the period after Homo sapiens arrived. For people around the world, except sub-Saharan Africans, about 1 to 3 percent of their DNA comes from Neanderthals, our close cousins who disappeared roughly 39,000 years ago. In the new analysis, an international team of researchers, including Pääbo and Reich, found that 6 to 9.4 percent of Oase 1's nuclear DNA (located inside a cell's nucleus) was derived from Neanderthals — a higher percentage than has been found in any other modern human genome sequenced so far. "He carries more Neanderthal DNA than any other present-day or ancient modern human seen to date." East Asians and Native Americans have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans, suggesting that more interbreeding happened with the ancestors of eastern non-Africans than with Europeans, the authors wrote in their paper, published today (June 22) in the journal Nature. Humans and Neanderthals were mating "later as well, and probably in Europe," the authors wrote. Reich said genetic analysis showed the individual, a hunter-gatherer, was from a "pioneer population" that entered Europe but did not contribute much or anything at all genetically to later Europeans.
– A jawbone found in Romania more than a decade ago provides the first genetic evidence that humans and Neanderthals knocked boots in Europe before the latter disappeared between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago. Scientists who came across the bone of one of the earliest modern humans in Europe in a cave known as Pestera cu Oase noticed it had both modern human and Neanderthal traits. Now, a study of the bone's DNA—made possible by recent technological advances—explains why. "The sample is more closely related to Neanderthals than any other modern human we've ever looked at before," Harvard researcher David Reich explains in a press release. "We estimate that 6% to 9% of its genome is from Neanderthals. This is an unprecedented amount." In comparison, all people except sub-Saharan Africans share 1% to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals today. DNA in the fossil, which is 37,000 to 42,000 years old, suggests the Oase individual had a Neanderthal ancestor four to six generations back, reports Reuters. In other words, a great-great-grandparent might've been a Neanderthal, notes LiveScience. That shows interbreeding occurred far more recently than scientists had guessed; they initially thought interbreeding took place only in the Middle East between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. "It's an incredibly unexpected thing," Reich says. "In the last few years, we've documented interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, but we never thought we'd be so lucky to find someone so close to that event." You aren't likely to share any DNA with the jawbone's owner, however. Reich says the hunter-gatherer was from a "pioneer population" that entered Europe but "didn't give rise to the later population." (The oldest Neanderthal DNA is some 150,000 years old.)