Louis J. Sheehan.  Genetic material that Italian researchers extracted from the bones of European Stone Age Homo sapiens, sometimes called Cro-Magnons, bolsters the theory that people evolved independently of Neandertals, the team proposes.

Fossils of two anatomically modern H. sapiens found in a southern Italian cave yielded mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother, say Giorgio Bertorelle of the University of Ferrara in Italy and his colleagues. The DNA contains chemical