My Life Scientific
BBC Earth|January 2019

This month, anatomist and presenter Alice Roberts talks to Helen Pilcher about her love of skeletons and the lure of Strictly Come Dancing

My Life Scientific

Dr Alice Roberts

Which extinct species would you most like to meet?

Neanderthals. They are our closest relative. We try to reconstruct the minds of these people by looking at their culture. I’d like to know how different they were to modern humans from the same time.

Who would win in a fight – a Neanderthal or a modern human?

If it’s about brawn then probably a Neanderthal. They were, on average, more muscly than Palaeolithic modern humans. We know this from the size and shape of their bones, and can reconstruct their muscle mass from that. But they might have had sex rather than fight.

Ah yes, early humans and Neanderthals interbred…

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