"Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing have provided initial glimpses of the nuclear genome of Neandertals as well as other ancient mammals including cave bears and mammoths. In the 7 May 2010 issue of Science, an international team of researchers presents the draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of over 3 billion nucleotides from three individuals."

http://www.sciencemag.org/special/neandertal/feature/index.html

Podcast and transcript here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/764-b

It's estimated that about 2% of H. sapiens genome (throughout the world) appears to inherited from H. neanderthalensis. This is taken as confirmation that interbreeding was not merely localised, and occurred prior to H. sapiens migration beyond the range of the latter.

I was surprised to learn that Neanderthals had slightly larger brains than we have. Not having studied the subject, I had the impression - a common one maybe - that they were less intelligent. Probably not true. I wonder what kind of world this would be had they survived instead of us. Well, genetic differences between the two species can now be identified, which may eventually reveal some indicators regarding differences in behaviour.

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler