Patterns of diet and mobility in the last Neandertals and first modern humans
(PHYSorg.com Archaeology & Fossils)

A new international study indicates that Neandertals and early modern humans probably had very similar diets, contradicting the assumption that Neandertals died out because their diet was insufficiently varied. But modern humans may have had an advantage because they were more mobile and had better connections over longer distances, according to a team headed by Dr. Christoph Wißing at the University of Tübingen. Together with colleagues from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) in Tübingen, Belgium, France, Spain, Japan and the USA, he compared isotope data from fossil bones of the last Neandertals, early modern humans and animals, drawing new conclusions about the nutrition and migration of human species investigated and the ecosystems of the time. The results of the study have been published in the latest Scientific Reports.