http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/new-fossils-reveal-strange-looking-neanderthal-israel

The fossils from Nesher Ramla in Israel show a weird mix of Neanderthal-like and archaic features.

Some of the earliest bands of modern humans who ventured out of Africa and into the Middle East 120,000 to 140,000 years ago might have met a strange-looking character with the look of a primitive Neanderthal, but a stone toolkit as modern as their own. New fossils of this individual, found over the past decade in Israel, are stirring intense debate among paleoanthropologists: Was it the earliest known Neanderthal in the Middle East, or a late remnant of a previously unknown Neanderthal ancestor?