Discovery News announces the “Neanderthal Genome Being Mapped”, a bit of news that will certainly help turn the future of DNA research, as well as archeology, on its ear.

A bone fragment that scientists had initially ignored has begun to yield secrets of the Neanderthal genome, launching a new way to learn about the stocky and muscular relative of modern humans, scientists say.

Genetic material from the bone has let researchers identify more than a million building blocks of Neanderthal DNA so far, and it should be enough to derive most of the creature’s 3.3 billion blocks within the next two years, said researcher Svante Paabo.

…And the Neanderthal data will shed light on what DNA changes helped produce modern humanity by revealing which changes appeared relatively late in human evolution, after the ancestors of Neanderthals and of humans split apart, scientists said.

DNA analysis is spreading around the world as people trace their direct blood heritage through time, and may also change the face of genealogical research. As the database grows, and researchers learn more about how we are all inter-related as well as inter-connected, they can track even further back through history with such research.

Exciting stuff!