Some Neanderthals were redheads

The journal Science reports that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were fair-skinned redheads. This adaption likely helped the Neanderthals of the high latitudes synthesize vitamin D with less sunlight.

Separate teams isolated a version of a gene called mc1r from the fossils of two different Neanderthals, one 43,000-year-old fossil from Spain, and another 50,000-year-old fossil from Italy. The Neanderthal version of the mc1r gene is similar to a gene found in humans that have fair skin and red hair.

The Neanderthal version of mc1r is not found in humans, which confirms that the gene samples were not mistakenly taken from a human. This also strengthens the currently-accepted theory that humans did not evolve from Neanderthals. link