Human Evolution Insights Found Up a Neanderthal’s Nose

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TThe Neanderthals of my imagination are usually framed by frozen backgrounds. Perhaps woolly creatures – rhinos or mammoths – saunter past stocky hunters, festooned in the skins of a defeated Ice Age quarry.

Scientists attribute several characteristics of Neanderthals, such as short limbs and a stockier build, to the species’ adaptation to the colder climates that prevailed during their time on Earth. One of these features, the broad noses of Neanderthals, was thought to lead to equally ample nasal sinuses, containing specialized bones to warm and humidify the air inhaled in their cold, dry environment.

But researchers studying a remarkably well-preserved Neanderthal skeleton discovered in a cave in Italy have found that the individual’s nasal architecture was not much different from that of modern humans. This could mean that Neanderthals weren’t as specialized for the cold as previously thought, although an individual’s nose bones don’t necessarily tell the story of the entire species.

The Neanderthal skull studied by scientists is located in a cave near Altamura in Italy. The skeleton, discovered by researchers in 1993, is covered in deposits of a mineral called calcite, which has the effect of preserving bones. This complex preservation allowed the team of European scientists to study the internal nasal bones of the Neanderthal skull in unprecedented detail.

Read more: »How Neanderthals Kept Our Ancestors Warm»

The researchers inserted endoscopes into the skull – which remains in the cave to avoid damaging it – but did not find two delicate structures in the nasal bones that would have been proposed in Neanderthals. The absence of these features alters current theory about Neanderthal respiratory adaptation to cold climates. The nasal cavities, at least those of the Altamura Neanderthal, are more similar to those of modern humans living at low latitudes, which do not contain adaptations that could help resist climatic extremes, than to those of modern people living in arctic environments.

“The nasal aperture exhibits a structure antithetical to that of contemporary high-latitude human populations, instead displaying a shape associated with low-stress climatic conditions,” the authors wrote in a paper. PNAS document reporting the results.

But the Altamura skeleton, aged 130,000 to 172,000 years, is a relatively “old” Neanderthal. The species inhabited a large swath of what later became Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Minor around 450,000 to 40,000 years ago. Their existence occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, marked by periods of glaciation and cold interspersed with brief warming trends. In short, a climate harsh enough for the first human species to navigate there.

The shapes of nasal bones and other features may have varied significantly throughout Neanderthal existence, the authors warn. This is the first and most comprehensive examination of Neanderthal internal nasal architecture, performed on a single individual.

With each new discovery, the face of one of our closest evolutionary cousins ​​emerges more clearly.

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Main image: Costantino Buzi / Wikimedia Commons

• Bob Grant

  Published on November 19, 2025

  Bob Grant is the associate editor of Nautilus.