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PALAEOANTHROPOLOGY one individual’s teeth. Weyrich suspects that they were trying to treat a visible tooth abscess and a stomach infection caused by the bacte- Plaque DNA hints at rium Enterocytozoon bieneusi. Genetic evidence of a microbe called Methanobrevibacter oralis offers another insight, Neanderthal lifestyle because it is also found in the mouths of modern humans. Genome comparisons suggest that the Tooth analysis paints intimate picture of ancient lives. microbe’s modern lineage split from the Nean- derthal one hundreds of thousands of years after BY EWEN CALLAWAY Her team compared plaque DNA from the hominins’ last common ancestor lived. This Neanderthals from El Sidrón and from the suggests the archaebacterium was transmitted he Neanderthals of El Sidrón Cave in Spy cave in Belgium. The analysis revealed between them. “If you’re swapping spit between northern Spain lived hardscrabble lives. that whereas Spy denizens seemed to consume species, there’s kissing going on, or at least food But before they died some 50,000 years woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep, El Sidrón’s sharing,” says Weyrich. ■ Tago, they dined on mushrooms, moss and foraged for plants. Both ate mushrooms. pine nuts. One individual may even have used However, Hervé Bocherens, a palaeobiol- plants and moulds to treat his ailments. ogist at the University of Tübingen, Germany, CORRECTIONS This intimate portrait is revealed in an anal- is unconvinced that the plaque DNA identi- The News story ‘How to kill wild animals ysis of DNA from the hardened tooth plaque of fies meals and dietary differences. Databases of humanely for conservation’ (Nature 543, five Neanderthals (L. S. Weyrich et al. Nature plant and animal DNA tend to lack the extinct 18–19; 2017) misstated the affiliation for http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21674; 2017). species that Neanderthals would have eaten, Sara Dubois. She is at the British Columbia The study also reconstructs the first micro- and previous studies have suggested that both Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to biomes from an extinct hominin species, and groups ate meat. “At the moment I would not Animals. And the Editorial ‘Keep science hints at intimacy — perhaps kisses — between consider the conclusion robust,” he says. on track’ (Nature 542, 137; 2017) gave the humans and Neanderthals. “It really paints a The El Sidrón Neanderthals probably also wrong reference for research on the boycott different picture, almost of their personalities, used plants to self-medicate. DNA from pop- of South Africa in the 1980s; it should have of really who they were,” says Laura Weyrich, lar trees (parts of which contain salicyclic acid, been F. W. Lancaster Perspectives on the a palaeomicrobiologist at the University of historically used in aspirin), and Penicillium Professions 15 (1), 2–4 (1995). Adelaide in Australia who co-led the study. mould (the source of penicillin) turned up on

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