The genome of a Neanderthal nicknamed 'Thorin' from Grotte Mandrin, France, has been sequenced and dated to about 42,000 years ago. Genetic data published in Cell Genomics suggest Thorin's lineage remained isolated for roughly 50,000 years, showing high homozygosity and signs of inbreeding. Excavations led by Ludovic Slimak recovered the jaw in 2015 and additional fragments in following seasons. The finding forces a reassessment of Neanderthal population structure, mobility and how their extinction unfolded.
Neanderthal 'Thorin' Genome Reveals ~50,000 Years of Isolation — Rethinking Late Neanderthal Populations
The genome of a Neanderthal nicknamed 'Thorin' from Grotte Mandrin, France, has been sequenced and dated to about 42,000 years ago. Genetic data published in Cell Genomics suggest Thorin's lineage remained isolated for roughly 50,000 years, showing high homozygosity and signs of inbreeding. Excavations led by Ludovic Slimak recovered the jaw in 2015 and additional fragments in following seasons. The finding forces a reassessment of Neanderthal population structure, mobility and how their extinction unfolded.
01:47 AM, 11/18/2025Science
Key finding: Genomic sequencing of a Neanderthal found at Grotte Mandrin in France shows the individual belonged to a population that appears to have been genetically isolated from other Neanderthals for roughly 50,000 years.
Discovery at Grotte Mandrin
In 2015 paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak and his team recovered a fragmentary jaw from Grotte Mandrin, a cave in the Rhone Valley where excavations have been ongoing since 1998. Over subsequent seasons the team recovered additional teeth and bone fragments from the same lineage. Slimak and colleagues dated the specimen to about 42,000 years ago, near the end of Neanderthal presence in Europe, and nicknamed the individual 'Thorin'.
Genome sequencing and results
To learn more about Thorin's relationships and history, researchers sequenced the specimen's genome and published the results in the journal Cell Genomics. The genetic data indicate that the lineage to which Thorin belongs remained largely separate from other known Neanderthal groups for tens of millennia. The genome shows high homozygosity, consistent with recent inbreeding in a small, isolated population, and the study found no evidence that this lineage interbred with contemporary early modern humans in the region.
'It turns out that what I proposed 20 years ago was predictive,' Slimak told Live Science, noting that archaeological signals matched the genetic findings.
Archaeology supports a distinct local tradition
Nearly a decade before Thorin's bones were identified, Slimak had observed that stone tools from the Rhone Valley did not follow the more recent toolmaking styles found elsewhere. The new genomic evidence supports the idea of a long-lived, distinct Neanderthal population in this area that maintained cultural and genetic separation from neighboring groups.
Implications for Neanderthal extinction and population structure
The discovery challenges simple models that assume regular gene flow between neighboring groups in Late Pleistocene Europe. If populations could remain isolated for tens of millennia while other groups lived relatively nearby, researchers must reconsider assumptions about Neanderthal mobility, social networks, mating patterns, and the processes that contributed to their disappearance. The authors and commentators emphasize that further sampling and sequencing across regions will be needed to build a fuller picture.
Bottom line: The Thorin genome provides striking evidence that some Neanderthal populations were far more isolated than previously thought, raising new questions about how population structure shaped the final chapters of Neanderthal history.