Charles darwin was born on February 12th 1809. So it was appropriate that Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, chose Darwin's 200th anniversary to announce what would, until recently, have been thought an impossible discovery in evolutionary biology-a draft of the genome of Neanderthal man.rnDr Paabo made his announcement to the aaas meeting via a video link from Germany, and followed it up by a lecture in person on the 15th. The Neanderthal Genome Project, as it is known, is the culmination of a career devoted to the examination of ancient dna by a man whose work provided inspiration for Michael Crich-ton's novel and film "Jurassic Park".rnNeanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia from 400,000 to some 30,000 years ago. They were thus contemporary with modern Homo sapiens, who originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The disappearance of Neanderthals coincided with the arrival of Homo sapiens in their range, and there has been much speculation about whether the interlopers were to blame, if there was interbreeding, and which features of modern humanity, such as language, Neanderthals also possessed.
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