When did kissing evolve and did humans and Neanderthals get off with each other? New research

By Matilda Brindle, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Oxford

If I asked you to imagine your dream snog, chances are it wouldn’t be with a Neanderthal; burly and hirsute as they may be. However, my team’s new research suggests that these squat beefcakes might have been right up your ancestors’ street.

In our new paper, colleagues and I investigated kissing in monkeys and apes, including modern humans and Neanderthals, to reconstruct its evolutionary history for the first time.

Before we…

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