Neandertal (Homo Neanderthalensis) was a cousin species of modern humans that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 230,000 to 29,000 years ago during the Middle Palaeolithic (early Stone) age. Considerable debate in the recent years have been focussed on the similarities between Neandertal and modern human physiology and anatomy. Recently, some scientists have claimed that the Neandertals had a strong, yet high-pitched, voice that they used for both singing and speaking. It is also possible that some of our ancestors might have interbred with the Neandertals when the two species perhaps met in the Western Europe. The fact that such issues are being discussed is partly because of our extreme fascination with our closest (extinct) relatives.

Neandertal skeleton (Courtesy: National Geographic)Now, another team of scientists have constructed the first fully articulated, or jointed, Neandertal skeleton using castings from real Neandertal bones. The team included G.J. Sawyer from American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and Blaine Maley, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The bones were casted from those of a skeleton called La Ferrassie 1, which was discovered in France in 1909. This skeleton is fairly complete, but it lacks a complete rib cage, vertebral column, and pelvis. The researchers obtained these parts from other individual skeletons. This is the first time a full skeleton of the Neandertal has been constructed/assembled.
The skeleton stands 5.4 feet tall, and is currently on display at the Dolan DNA Learning Center in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. It will be permanently moved to AMNH in New York City.
The reconstruction could provide researchers valuable details about the Neandertals, and aid future work in comparative anatomy of humans and Neandertals.