Quiz: Reading Neanderthal fossils

Paleontologists studying how people lived tens of thousands of years before written texts often "read" skulls to learn about them. The rest of the skeleton can tell a powerful story too.

For example, compared to modern humans who possess lightly built—or gracile— skeletons, Neanderthals had thickset—or robust—skeletons.

Limb for limb, Neanderthals were more heavily built than we are today. Their stockier bones gave greater room for bigger muscle attachments, and this is one way in which we know Neanderthals were stronger than we were.

Question: Which of the following skeletal remains look like they might belong to a Neanderthal?

hand bones
hand bones

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Correct!

Neanderthals had bigger, more splayed out hands with rounder fingertips than modern humans. They would have had a stronger grip than modern humans.

leg bone
leg bone

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Correct!

Neanderthals had thicker thighbones than modern humans. Despite physical differences in many of their bones, Neanderthals and modern humans wouldn’t have known they belonged to different species of human. To each other, they were just people.

skull
skull

Correct!

Neanderthals had much larger, and more pronounced bony eyebrow ridges circling their eye sockets—known simply as brow ridges or as supraorbital ridges.

These were one of the very last features to disappear in modern humans, which happened around the same time our jaws reduced in size. The Neanderthals, who had much larger jaws than Homo sapiens, retained their brow ridges until they became extinct.

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