From J
Emma Young dates the oldest known tumour in the human ancestral line – a fibrous dysplastic neoplasm in a Neanderthal rib bone – to 120,000 years ago (9 November, p 36). There is, however, evidence for a much older human tumour.
In 2003, a German group described a meningioma in the Steinheim man (). The skull, dug up in Steinheim, southern Germany in 1933, is said to be a transitional form of Homo heidelbergensis to Neanderthal, 300,000 to 250,000 years old.
Mauer, Germany
ürgen Schweizer
