Neanderthals and modern humans, different faces

The New York University’s College of Dentistry has published a study describing for the first time the developmental processes that differentiate Neanderthal facial skeletons from those of modern humans.

Lacruz’s research team found that the Neanderthals are quite different from Homo sapiens in the manner in which their faces grow. “This is an important piece of the puzzle of the evolution” says Lacruz remarking their findings suggest that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens should be considered distinct branches of human family tree.

"We always considered Neanderthals to be a very different category of hominin," said Lacruz. "But in fact they share with older African hominins a similar facial growth pattern. It's actually humans who are developmentally derived, this means that humans deviated from the ancestral pattern. In that sense, the face that is unique is the modern human face, and the next phase of research is to identify how and when modern humans acquired their facial-growth development plan."

Moreover, Lacruz says, understanding the process of facial ontogeny can help us to explain the variation in facial size and shape among modern humans.

The picture shows the growth directions of the maxilla in the Sima de los Huesos and Neanderthals compared to modern humans. We can see that the extensive bone deposits over the maxilla in the fossils are with a strong forward growth component while resorption in the modern human face attenuates forward displacement