These days, we Homo sapiens are the only humans around, but that wasn’t always the case. This episode, we are joined by special guest Dr. Bridget Alex to discuss our most famous extinct cousins, Neanderthals. We explore what makes them similar and dissimilar to us, what evidence we use to study their lives and culture, and how our understanding of them has grown from outdated misrepresentations to the complex and fascinating people we now know them to have been.

In the news: a fossil bat skull, beaver evolution, early pliosaurs, and Ancient Egyptian snakes

Time markers:
Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00
News: 00:06:25
Main discussion, Part 1: 00:41:00
Main discussion, Part 2: 01:38:35
Patron question: 02:30:35

Find Dr. Alex on her website: bridgetalex.com
Or follow her on Twitter: @bannelia

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http://commondescentpodcast.com/

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome.
More music like this at http://ocremix.org.

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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