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A genetic study has unveiled that two Neanderthals who lived approximately 10,000 years apart in Siberia's famous Denisova Cave were distant relatives. This remarkable discovery provides the fourth complete Neanderthal genome ever recovered and offers unprecedented insight into the population structure, isolation, and resilience of these ancient hominins in the Altai Mountains. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed a tiny bone fragment from a male Neanderthal, known as D17, who lived around 110,000 years ago. Researchers compared his genome with that of a female Neanderthal, D5 (also known as the Altai Neanderthal), who inhabited the same cave roughly 120,000 years ago. The genetic analysis demonstrated that while they were not direct ancestors of