Why did Neanderthals perish while we thrived? Luck!
Our big, lumbering cousin the Neanderthal was no dumber than homo sapiens.
They had tools, language and art, and hunted a wide variety of animals. So why did they go belly-up some 28,000-24,000 years ago?
Well evolutionary ecologist Clive Finlayson says it was a deadly combination of climate change and just bad luck.
To put it simply they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A series of ice ages ate away the forest habitats where Neanderthals and their predecessors, Homo heidelbergensis, made a living.
As their numbers declined, those who remained took refuge in warmer parts of Europe, nearer the Mediterranean.
But a final drop in temperatures that began around 50,000 years ago made even this meagre living unsustainable.
We should, of course, shed a tear for a fallen comrade but as reported in Weird Science only a couple of weeks ago we're close to bringing them back.
Who's to say they'll be as unlucky again?
Weird Science Factoid: On some Caribbean islands, the oysters can climb trees. What?
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
