Living in and on our bodies are trillions of microbial cells belonging to thousands of bacterial species, known as the microbiome. These microbes play key roles in human health, but little is known about their evolution. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a multidisciplinary international research team led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) investigated the evolutionary history of the hominid oral microbiome by analyzing the fossilized dental plaque of humans and Neanderthals spanning the past 100,000 years and comparing it to those of wild chimpanzees, gorillas, and howler monkeys.
Click here for original story, Researchers reconstruct the oral microbiomes of Neanderthals, primates, and humans
Source: Phys.org