Daily Dose of Prehistory: Back from Extinction 72

No u

Homo neanderthalensis, named after the Neander Valley where the first specimen was discovered, was a species/subspecies of archaic humans of the genus Homo that lived in Eurasia from around 400000 to 40000 years ago. They were clearly built for cold climates, having short limbs, large bodies, large noses, and large mouths to conserve warmth in their Ice Age environment. Neanderthals lived exceptionally hard lives; the average Neanderthal fossil has as many healed bone fractures as your average rodeo rider. In appearance, they were basically your stereotypical caveman, heavy brow ridge and all, but were known to have red and blonde hair. Indeed, the reason humans are able to grow red and blonde hair is due to interbreeding with Neanderthals (which is a popular theory as to why they went extinct, interbreeding with humans so much that their unique genome was lost), as all non-Africans have up to 1.5-2.1% Neanderthal DNA.

Blue eyes is also a mutation thought to have occured in Neanderthals. Some people (notably Ozzy Osborne) have up to 8% of their DNA. Also, they had a bigger occipital lobe (the visual brain), which is a trait that we sadly did not inherit.