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Svante Paabo, born 1955, Swedish geneticist. Paabo, seen here behind the cast of a Neanderthal skull, is director of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He pioneered the recovery of DNA from ancient animals and plants. In 2006, he announced the Neanderthal genome sequencing project. Working on 38,000 year old bone, Paabo's team yielded the first complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome sequence in 2006. The full Neanderthal genome will be published in late 2009. Photographed in 2008. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/VOLKER STEGER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)