An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research that helps the reconstruction of the final phase of Neanderthals’ history. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, sequenced the genome of 5 individuals of that species who lived between 39,000 and 47,000 years ago. These individuals are more closely related to those who interbred with modern humans than to an older individual from the Altai mountains whose DNA was sequenced some time ago.

An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” describes the study of the fossil remains of a chick that lived about 127 million years ago and died shortly after its birth. A team of researchers led by Dr. Fabien Knoll of the University of Manchester examined this specimen that belongs to the Enantiornithes, a group of primordial birds that lived during the Cretaceous period. Its almost complete skeleton made it possible to analyze its bones’ structure and development, obtaining new data on those birds.

An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B” describes a research on the changes that occurred during the Carboniferous rainforest collapse. According to a team of scientists led by the British University of Birmingham, a climate change that occurred about 307 million years ago caused a drought that led to the extinction of some groups of tetrapods, the first vertebrates that lived on the mainland, favoring at the same time other groups.