Classification of Collagens via Peptide Ambiguation, in a Paleoproteomic LC-MS/MS-Based Taxonomic Pipeline.

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) extends the matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) Zooarcheology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) "mass fingerprinting" approach to species identification by providing fragmentation spectra for each peptide. However, ancient bone samples generate sparse data containing only a few collagen proteins, rendering target-decoy strategies unusable and increasing uncertainty in peptide annotation. To ameliorate this issue, we present a ZooMS/MS data pipeline that builds on a manually curated Collagen database and comprises two novel algorithms: isoBLAST and ClassiCOL.

Reevaluating the timing of Neanderthal disappearance in Northwest Europe.

Elucidating when Neanderthal populations disappeared from Eurasia is a key question in paleoanthropology, and Belgium is one of the key regions for studying the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. Previous radiocarbon dating placed the Spy Neanderthals among the latest surviving Neanderthals in Northwest Europe with reported dates as young as 23,880 ± 240 B.P.

Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe.

Little is known about the population history of Neandertals over the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence. We retrieved nuclear genomic sequences from two Neandertals, one from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany and the other from Scladina Cave in Belgium, who lived around 120,000 years ago. Despite the deeply divergent mitochondrial lineage present in the former individual, both Neandertals are genetically closer to later Neandertals from Europe than to a roughly contemporaneous individual from Siberia.