A recent study describes the differences between Neanderthal facial skeletons with the ones of modern humans.

An international research team, has just published a study describing for the first time the developmental processes that differentiate Neanderthal facial skeletons from those of modern humans.

This study showed that the Neanderthals, who appeared about 200,000 years ago, are quite distinct from Homo sapiens (humans) in the manner in which their faces grow.

        Bone is formed through a process of bone deposition by osteoblasts (bone-forming cells) and resorption by osteoclast (bone-absorbing) cells, which break down bone. In humans, the outermost layer of bone in the face consists of large resorptive fields, but in Neanderthals, the opposite is true: In the outermost layer of bone, there is extensive bone deposition.
          Neanderthals were always considered to be a very different category of hominin, but i fact they share with older African hominins a similar facial growth pattersn. It is actually humans who are developmentally derived, meaning that humans deviated from the ancestral pattern. . In that sense, the face that is unique is the modern human face, and the next phase of research is to identify how and when modern humans acquired their facial-growth development plan.

        In our opinión, it is an amazing research because it provides important information about human evolution, because some think that Neanderthals and humans should not be considered from different branches of the family tree. But those discoveries provide enough evidence to affirm that those two groups are sufficiently different from one another.

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151207131517.htm