The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, relates to the re-dating of the Neadnerthal remains from Spy Cave by a team based in Oxford’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.
Most of the dates obtained in this new study have been found to be much older than those obtained previously on the same bone samples – up to 5,000 years older in certain cases. According to the paper, Re-evaluating the timing of Neanderthal disappearance in Northwest Europe, this suggests Neanderthals disappeared from the region 44,200-40,600 years ago, much earlier than previously estimated.