Philadelphia ? In an unprecedented feat of forensic anthropology, European researchers extracted enough DNA from two Neanderthal skulls to suggest their owners sported red hair and white skin back when they were alive 43,000 and 50,000 years ago.

The hair color of humanity’s closest relative might sound trivial, but the finding, announced in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, stunned anthropologists with the sheer power of genetics to reveal what Neanderthals really looked like, and how they behaved. And that, some say, will change the way humanity views itself.

“We are building an image of these Neanderthal people – their physical aspects, cognitive abilities, metabolism, immunity – the range is enormous,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox of Barcelona, an author of the paper.

Last week, the same team announced that Neanderthals and today’s humans share a gene associated with language.