Neanderthals, those beetle-browed cousins of ancestral humans who went mysteriously extinct 30,000 years ago, are often depicted as dark-haired and swarthy. Now a study of ancient DNA indicates that at least some of them had fair skin and red hair.

The findings are consistent with the idea that as early humans migrated north from Africa, they had less need for sun-protective dark pigments and may have benefited from light skin’s enhanced ability to make vitamin D from sunlight. Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and colleagues isolated DNA from the bones of two Neanderthals whose remains were found in Italy and Spain. They analyzed the MC1R gene, which affects the balance between red-yellow and black-brown pigments in skin. People who inherit a mutated version of the MC1R gene from both parents tend to have pale skin and reddish hair.

The two Neanderthal specimens harbored identical mutations in their MC1R genes, which tests indicated would have led to light skin and red hair if inherited from both parents. And that mutation is different from any ever seen in modern humans, so it appears to have arisen independently from those in today’s human lineage.

It is impossible to tell if either of the two Neanderthals inherited the mutated version of MC1R from both parents. But the team’s statistical analysis concluded that, since two out of two specimens they looked at had at least one redhead gene each, the odds are that at least 1% of Neanderthals did carry mutated copies from both parents and would have had “classically Irish looking red hair and pale skin,” they reported last week in the journal Science.