Late last year, scientists led by Joao Zilhao of the University of Lisbon found the skeleton of a 4-year-old child buried in rural Lapedo Valley, near Lisbon. Although the skull had been crushed, the intact jawbone led the scientists to conclude that it was an early modern human, probably a boy (Science, 8 January, p. 169).

But then paleontologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis loaded the skeleton's measurements into a computer. He agrees that the child's chin, which juts out "like a snowplow," looks human. But he says other features--such as the broad trunk and relatively short forearms and lower legs--have a distinctly Neandertal look. Trinkaus won't divulge any more details of the analysis, which has been submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But he insists that "this child has a mosaic of features that are distinctly Neandertal and distinctly early European modern human." The scientists decided to talk about the find after being besieged with inquiries, triggering a global media flurry.

Anthropologist Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who has argued that Neandertals and humans were too different from each other to interbreed, is still skeptical. He has not seen the bones, but "my inclination would be to believe this is probably a modern human, fairly heavily built," he says. "Nobody knows what a hybrid would look like."