Topic
Study of hominin fossils, including the Kebara Cave and Sima de los Huesos Neanderthal pelvises used in this comparison.
A Quaternary Science Reviews study redates Jebel Katefeh-1 to 60,000-50,000 years ago and reads its prepared flakes as Neanderthal work, at a median likelihood of 78 percent.
Reality
Digital reconstructions of two Neanderthal pelvises put the childbirth-versus-bipedalism trade-off under strain, and point at the pelvic floor instead.
Reality
Stature estimates of 1.8 and 1.9 metres come from an incomplete femur and a tibia pulled off the seabed, undated and with no recorded find-spot. The anatomy is fine; the sample is the problem.
Reality
A statistical study of tool shapes puts Neanderthals in the Saudi desert about 55,000 years ago. The inference is careful, the climate story is tidy, and the skeletal evidence is nonexistent.
Reality
A Tel Aviv University team reports that male Neanderthal pelvises track modern human females, not males, inverting a baseline used for decades to read hominin hips.
Reality