Neanderthals may have breastfed their young for more than two years

Neanderthal children were exclusively breastfed for nine months and fully weaned after the age of two, according to clues found in their teeth.

Our Neanderthal relatives roamed Eurasia for thousands of years before going extinct about 40,000 years ago. To understand more about Neanderthal family life, Tanya Smith at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues studied two 250,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth found in the Rhone Valley in France.

One tooth was a first molar that most likely formed soon after birth. The other…