Looks like the Neanderthals were dying to get some — literally.
A new study claims that sex with modern humans drove Neanderthals to extinction after finding a rare blood disorder present in their babies.
The condition, scientists discovered, is called “haemolytic disease of the foetus and newborn” (HDFN), which causes a fatal kind of anemia. Today, the condition is rare, only affecting three in 100,000 pregnancies, the Daily Mail reported.
Scientists said that the presence of HDFN in Neanderthal newborns would have made it difficult to reproduce and limited their offspring.
Stephane Mazieres, one of the authors of the paper from Aix-Marseille University, told Daily Mail that the condition “would have been quite common amongst Neanderthals.”
While the study helped scientists understand the origins of our own species, they also discovered the pitfall of the Neanderthals, after much speculation as to how they went extinct.
Other potential hypotheses for their disappearance are competitiveness with modern humans or climate change, according to the Smithsonian Institute. This study now offers another possibility.
“(It) reinforces the notion of high inbreeding, weak demography and endangered reproductive success of the late Neanderthals, giving to our species the great opportunity to spread throughout the world,” the researchers concluded in their study.