To date, the only Neandertal genome that has been sequenced to high quality is from an individual found in Southern Siberia. We sequenced the genome of a female Neandertal from ~50,000 years ago from ...Vindija Cave, Croatia, to ~30-fold genomic coverage. She carried 1.6 differences per 10,000 base pairs between the two copies of her genome, fewer than present-day humans, suggesting that Neandertal populations were of small size. Our analyses indicate that she was more closely related to the Neandertals that mixed with the ancestors of present-day humans living outside of sub-Saharan Africa than the previously sequenced Neandertal from Siberia, allowing 10 to 20% more Neandertal DNA to be identified in present-day humans, including variants involved in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations, schizophrenia, and other diseases.
Analysis of Neandertal DNA holds great potential for investigating the population history of this group of hominins, but progress has been limited due to the rarity of samples and damaged state of ...the DNA. We present a method of targeted ancient DNA sequence retrieval that greatly reduces sample destruction and sequencing demands and use this method to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of five Neandertals from across their geographic range. We find that mtDNA genetic diversity in Neandertals that lived 38,000 to 70,000 years ago was approximately one-third of that in contemporary modern humans. Together with analyses of mtDNA protein evolution, these data suggest that the long-term effective population size of Neandertals was smaller than that of modern humans and extant great apes.
Although it has previously been shown that Neanderthals contributed DNA to modern humans, not much is known about the genetic diversity of Neanderthals or the relationship between late Neanderthal ...populations at the time at which their last interactions with early modern humans occurred and before they eventually disappeared. Our ability to retrieve DNA from a larger number of Neanderthal individuals has been limited by poor preservation of endogenous DNA and contamination of Neanderthal skeletal remains by large amounts of microbial and present-day human DNA. Here we use hypochlorite treatment of as little as 9 mg of bone or tooth powder to generate between 1- and 2.7-fold genomic coverage of five Neanderthals who lived around 39,000 to 47,000 years ago (that is, late Neanderthals), thereby doubling the number of Neanderthals for which genome sequences are available. Genetic similarity among late Neanderthals is well predicted by their geographical location, and comparison to the genome of an older Neanderthal from the Caucasus indicates that a population turnover is likely to have occurred, either in the Caucasus or throughout Europe, towards the end of Neanderthal history. We find that the bulk of Neanderthal gene flow into early modern humans originated from one or more source populations that diverged from the Neanderthals that were studied here at least 70,000 years ago, but after they split from a previously sequenced Neanderthal from Siberia around 150,000 years ago. Although four of the Neanderthals studied here post-date the putative arrival of early modern humans into Europe, we do not detect any recent gene flow from early modern humans in their ancestry.
The chronostratigraphy of Coniacian–Maastrichtian platform carbonates exposed on the island of Brač and the adjacent mainland has been revised, based on numerical ages derived from strontium-isotope ...stratigraphy (SIS) of low-Mg calcite of rudist shells. The Dol intra-platform basin formed during the mid-Coniacian–early Santonian. The base of the prograding Pučišća Formation is of mid-Santonian age (84.9
Ma) in the southeast, and late Middle Campanian (77.3
Ma) in the northwest of the island, indicating a progradation rate of the platform margin of ca. 2.5
km/myr. Subaerial exposure of the platform occurred during the latest Middle Campanian and is coeval with a major drop in sea level reported from the Boreal Realm, North America, and the southern Tethyan margin. The base of the Sumartin Formation is revised here to the earliest Late Campanian (ca. 75
Ma). At its top, the formation contains rudist-bearing limestones of latest Maastrichtian age (65.4–65.0
Ma). The exact position of the K/T boundary cannot be drawn due to the lack of material suitable for SIS, and to the absence of diagnostic fossils in restricted innermost-platform deposits of the Liburnian Formation, which follows conformably over the rudist-bearing Sumartin Formation.
Based on the revised chronostratigraphy of platform evolution, and particularly on the numerical ages that constrain the progradation of the Pučišća Formation, the stratigraphic ranges of characteristic Tethyan rudist bivalves and benthic foraminifers are re-evaluated.
A complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence was reconstructed from a 38,000 year-old Neandertal individual with 8341 mtDNA sequences identified among 4.8 Gb of DNA generated from ∼0.3 g of bone. ...Analysis of the assembled sequence unequivocally establishes that the Neandertal mtDNA falls outside the variation of extant human mtDNAs, and allows an estimate of the divergence date between the two mtDNA lineages of 660,000 ± 140,000 years. Of the 13 proteins encoded in the mtDNA, subunit 2 of cytochrome
c oxidase of the mitochondrial electron transport chain has experienced the largest number of amino acid substitutions in human ancestors since the separation from Neandertals. There is evidence that purifying selection in the Neandertal mtDNA was reduced compared with other primate lineages, suggesting that the effective population size of Neandertals was small.
It has been shown that Neanderthals contributed genetically to modern humans outside Africa 47,000-65,000 years ago. Here we analyse the genomes of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from the Altai ...Mountains in Siberia together with the sequences of chromosome 21 of two Neanderthals from Spain and Croatia. We find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago. By contrast, we do not detect such a genetic contribution in the Denisovan or the two European Neanderthals. We conclude that in addition to later interbreeding events, the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains and early modern humans met and interbred, possibly in the Near East, many thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
The postwar condition – the period where war is over yet the socio-political ordering of any given postwar entity remains contested and an unchallenged peace has still to be reached – is inherently ...spatial. This spatiality, however, has yet be fully addressed in theoretical and analytical terms, meaning that we neither understand it in its entirety nor have the tools with which to explore it thoroughly. This gap in existing research – found in both peace research and political geography – is the focus of this paper as I ask: how can the spatiality of the postwar condition be understood and studied? Using the concept of ‘relational space’ (Massey 2005, p. 61), I argue that the postwar condition is relational in its spatiality and that it should be studied through its material, perceived, and lived dimensions. The relational spatiality of the postwar condition means that the postwar society both produces and is produced by the postwar spaces in which it happens, in a ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ where the two are mutually constitutive (Soja 2010, p. 4). This paper thereby contributes to the “spatial turn” in peace research by theorising more thoroughly the postwar condition as relational in its spatiality as well as by developing an analytical framework able to explore this spatiality. It also brings the “peace turn” in political geography closer to peace research by suggesting how it can advance the research front on the spatiality of the postwar condition. It finally generates much needed insights on space in the postwar city of Mitrovica (Kosovo).
The plurality and subjectivity of peace means that transitions from war are contested - i.e. permeated by conflicts between previously warring antagonists who want to (re)order postwar society ...according to competing peace(s). But while there always will exist mutually excluding peace(s), such outliers do not foreclose middle grounds where multiple peace(s) can coexist. In this article, I argue that the postwar city can generate coexistence between peace(s) of varying divergence through the creativity, accommodation, and fragmentation of city spaces. These arguments are illustrated through examples from postwar Belfast, Mitrovica, and Mostar. I term this conceptualization urban peace.
Milan Herak, renowned Croatian geologist, passed away in Zagreb on Apr 29, 2015 at the age of 98. In 2015, the Croatian Geological Society and the publishing house Izvori printed academician Herak's ...autobiography titled My life without signposts, a manuscript which he finished on his 96th birthday. In it he put forward many important and interesting pieces of information which lit up his life, but also the development of geology and overall science in Croatia in the last seventy years. Academician Milan Herak was also very socially engaged. Thus, for example in the establishment of the Croatian Geological Society in 1951, he was elected the first secretary, and later became chairman, and since 1976 he was the Society's honorary member. Herak was a recipient of numerous awards and decorations. He had a rich and meaningful life with extraordinary achievements. His harmonious family were a great support, especially his wife, in the true sense of the word a lifetime companion, Ojdana Herak whom he met while still as a student.
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