In 1997, Svante Pääbo, then at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, analyzed DNA from the mitochondria of a Neandertal. This was the first time DNA from an extinct form of humans could be studied. In 2006, he initiated the “Neandertal Genome Project” at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. With financial support from the Max Planck Society, Pääbo and his colleagues developed methods to more efficiently extract and analyze DNA fragments from ancient remains with the ultimate goal to study the complete genome of Neandertals.
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