%0 Journal Article %J Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A %D 2013 %T No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. %A Gómez-Robles, Aida %A Bermudez De Castro, Jose Maria %A Arsuaga, Juan-Luis %A Carbonell, Eudald %A Polly, P David %K Animals %K Biological Evolution %K Fossils %K Hominidae %K Humans %K Linear Models %K Phylogeny %K Species Specificity %K Tooth %X

A central problem in paleoanthropology is the identity of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans ([N-MH]LCA). Recently developed analytical techniques now allow this problem to be addressed using a probabilistic morphological framework. This study provides a quantitative reconstruction of the expected dental morphology of the [N-MH]LCA and an assessment of whether known fossil species are compatible with this ancestral position. We show that no known fossil species is a suitable candidate for being the [N-MH]LCA and that all late Early and Middle Pleistocene taxa from Europe have Neanderthal dental affinities, pointing to the existence of a European clade originated around 1 Ma. These results are incongruent with younger molecular divergence estimates and suggest at least one of the following must be true: (i) European fossils and the [N-MH]LCA selectively retained primitive dental traits; (ii) molecular estimates of the divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans are underestimated; or (iii) phenotypic divergence and speciation between both species were decoupled such that phenotypic differentiation, at least in dental morphology, predated speciation.

%B Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A %V 110 %P 18196-201 %8 2013 Nov 5 %G eng %U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145426 %N 45 %1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145426?dopt=Abstract %R 10.1073/pnas.1302653110