Let the author of this article immediately recall a memory. September 2018. It was in Malataverne, a commune in the Drôme, in the Mandrin cave. A report to analyse the search for the last Neanderthals in France that has been carried out there every summer for years by a team led by archaeologist Ludovic Slimak, a researcher at the CNRS. And at the entrance to the cave, like an apparition: crushed and still trapped in the grey ground, a jaw full of teeth. A few phalanges to one side and, a little further on, more teeth. The skull was missing but we were undoubtedly there in front of the most beautiful Neanderthal specimen discovered in France since the late 1970s. A wonderful first.
However, science and its popularization are such that we do not talk about a discovery until its in-depth study is published in a serious journal. In order not to compromise the work of the researcher or the trust he has placed in you, but also so that the announced discovery does not seem crazy. So we had to promise not to reveal anything, to keep the scoop and bite a little. Six years later, almost exactly today, the study finally appears in cellular genomics, this Wednesday, September 11th.
The individual was nicknamed “Thorin”, like the character in the novel. The Hobbit. “It is a tribute to Tolkien, who described intelligent humanoids belonging to different species.explains Ludovic Slimak, first author of the study. Tolkien’s Thorin is one of the last Dwarf Kings under the Mountain, one of the last of his line, and our Thorin is one of the last Neanderthals. »
“Grain by grain extraction”
The study took so long to appear for two main reasons. Firstly, the slow extraction of Thorin’s remains, discovered in 2015! “I had decided to extend the excavation outside the cave, says Ludovic Slimak. It was during the cleaning of the area that we saw it. » Under the first brush stroke, five connected teeth appeared. “Nobody rips out a piece of their jaw, said the researcher. “There was obviously a corpse. But on the ground everything is weakened. How to remove this thing that is made up of thousands of small pieces, while keeping its exact position?” Answer : “We stopped everything, sat down and thought. It was necessary to develop a grain-by-grain extraction protocol. And when I say that, it’s not a picture, it’s grain by grain with tweezers.”
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