and here
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Original papers can be found here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Out in @science.org of course

Co-first author Manjusha Chintalapati is also on bluesky @mchintalapati.bsky.social

together with @lauritsskov.bsky.social, @matejahajdi.bsky.social and Alba Bossoms Mesa.

This study was a collaboration between MPI for evolutionary anthropology and @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social , under the supervision of @moorjanipriya.bsky.social and @benmpeter.bsky.social, with co-first author Manjusha Chintalapati

Excitingly, Suemer et al. published in Nature today, also shows similar estimates for the timing of the Neanderthal gene flow. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We examined the distribution of Neandertal ancestry over time and found that the landscape of Neandertal ancestry, the deserts and high frequency regions, formed quickly after the gene flow supporting theoretical predictions.

Our data supports a single extended pulse of Neandertal gene flow that took place around 47,000 years ago, with a duration of around 7,000 years.

Digging deeper, we infer the timing of Neandertal gene flow per individual by studying the ancestry covariance across the genome.

Interestingly, the Early out of Africa individuals including Oase1, Ust’ Ishim and the Bacho Kiros have the highest unique Neandertal ancestry and significantly different matching profile to sequenced Neandertals than later modern humans- a possible indication of diversified gene flow.

By exploring the colocalization of Neandertal ancestry segments and contrasting it to genome-wide allele sharing, we uncovered that most (>90%) Neandertal ancestry is shared among individuals and follows the overall population structure.

We use genomic data from 59 ancient modern human individuals ranging between 45,000–2,200 yBP with 275 diverse present-day individuals from worldwide populations forming 16 clusters for our analysis.

Previous studies characterized the Neandertal ancestry segments in present-day individuals and found a non-homogeneous distribution. But how did this distribution look in the past?

Our research identifies a single major Neandertal gene flow event which occurred ~47,000 years ago, lasting about 6,800 years, which significantly impacted genetic diversity in non-African ancestors.