Researchers recently discovered fragments of Neanderthal DNA from the genome of a 45,000-year-old modern human from Siberia.

The team of researchers, led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, sequenced the genome and compared it against the genomes of individuals who lived later in Europe and Asia, indicating that he lived around the time when ancestors of modern-day people in Europe and eastern Asia went separate ways.

As with all modern-day individuals outside of Africa, the Ust’-Ishim man carried portions of Neanderthal DNA in his genome. The segments of the early human were much longer than those found in modern day humans, indicating that the admixture with Neanderthals occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

A generally complete human femur for Ust’-Ishim man was discovered in western Siberia in 2008. Radiocarbon dating of the bone indicated its age to be about 45,000 years. Bence Viola, an anthropologist who analyzed the bone, said in a statement that “the morphology of the bone suggests that it is an early modern human; that is an individual related to populations that are the direct ancestors of people alive today,” adding that “this individual is one of the oldest modern humans found outside the Middle East and Africa.”

The researchers sequenced the genome and compared it to modern day humans from over 50 populations.