Thursday, September 14, 2006  Neanderthal's last stand  Source:
Nature  Cave in Gibraltar may be most recent home of extinct
species.  David Brill  Gibraltar may have been the last refuge
of the Neanderthals, according to the results of a six-year
archaeological dig.  The findings, which show that Neanderthals
lived alongside modern humans for thousands of years, bring
fresh evidence to the debate on what happened to our
evolutionary cousins, and whether modern humans drove them to
extinction.  Clive Finlayson from the Gibraltar Museum and his
colleagues found Neanderthal artefacts in a site called Gorham's
Cave. The dig there has so far unearthed 103 items, including
spear-points, knives and scraping devices, bearing the marks of
Neanderthal craftsmanship. Radiocarbon dating suggests that most
of the objects are about 28,000 years old, with the youngest
being 24,000 years old.  Data from nearby sites show that modern
humans were present 32,000 years ago, so the two seem to have
overlapped for millennia.  But