There is a new genome from a late European Neanderthal (DNA recovered from a dig find in 2015), nicknamed Thorin (a Tolkien character), published today in Cell Genomics (DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.…)!

Thorin’s genome has allowed the research team to claim the presence of multiple isolated late Neanderthal communities in Europe close to their time of extinction. These groups appear to have had little interaction in their last millennia despite geographical proximity.

One of the pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion is the level of homozygosity in Thorin’s genome: “Thorin harbors ∼7% of its genome in homozygous segments of ≥5 Mb, including 45 Mb (∼1.5%) in segments longer than 20 Mb, indicative of recent inbreeding.”