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Since 2005, evidence for substantial admixture of Neanderthal DNA in modern populations is accumulating.[2][3][4]
The divergence time between the Neanderthal and modern human lineages is estimated at between 750,000 and 400,000 years ago.
The recent time is suggested by Endicott et al. (2010)[5]
and Rieux et al. (2014).[6]
A significantly deeper time of parallelism, combined with repeated early admixture events, was calculated by Rogers et al. (2017).[7]
^Ovchinnikov, Igor V.; Götherström, Anders; Romanova, Galina P.; Kharitonov, Vitaliy M.; Lidén, Kerstin; Goodwin, William (2000). "Molecular analysis of Neanderthal DNA from the northern Caucasus". Nature. 404 (6777): 490–93. Bibcode:2000Natur.404..490O. doi:10.1038/35006625. PMID10761915. S2CID3101375.
^Endicott, Phillip; Ho, Simon Y.W.; Stringer, Chris (July 2010). "Using genetic evidence to evaluate four palaeoanthropological hypotheses for the timing of Neanderthal and modern human origins". Journal of Human Evolution. 59 (1): 87–95. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.04.005. PMID20510437. S2CID223433.
^Rogers, Alan R.; Bohlender, Ryan J.; Huff, Chad D. (12 September 2017). "Early history of Neanderthals and Denisovans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (37): 9859–9863. Bibcode:2017PNAS..114.9859R. doi:10.1073/pnas.1706426114. PMC5604018. PMID28784789.;
see also:
Jordana Cepelewicz, Genetics Spills Secrets From Neanderthals' Lost History, Quanta Magazine, 18 September 2017.
"The dating of that schism between the Neanderthals and the Denisovans is surprising because previous research pegged it as much more recent: a 2016 study, for instance, set it at only 450,000 years ago. An earlier separation means we should expect to find many more fossils of both eventually. It also changes the interpretation of some fossils. Take the large-brained hominid bones belonging to a species called Homo heidelbergensis, which lived in Europe and Asia around 600,000 years ago. Paleoanthropologists disagreed about how they relate to other human groups, some positing they were ancestors of both modern humans and Neanderthals, others claim they were a non-ancestral species replaced by the Neanderthals in their spread across Europe."