News Excerpt:

Neanderthals were morning people, a new study suggests. And some humans today who like getting up early might credit genes they inherited from their Neanderthal ancestors.

Key findings from the study:

• It found that Neanderthals carried some of the same clock-related genetic variants as do people who report being early risers.
• About 700,000 years ago, our lineages split apart, most likely in Africa. While the ancestors of modern humans largely stayed in Africa, the Neanderthal lineage migrated into Eurasia.
• Most living humans contain Neanderthal DNA fragments, and some genes received from Neanderthals and Denisovans may have conferred survival advantages, such as resistance to new infections.
• Denisovans are another population of early humans who lived in Asia and were distantly related to Neanderthals.
• The researchers found over 1,000 mutations that were unique only to living humans or to Neanderthals and Denisovans. 
• Their analysis revealed that many of these mutations probably had important effects on how the body clock operated. 
• The researchers predicted that some body-clock proteins that are abundant in our cells were much scarcer in the cells of Neanderthals and Denisovans.