Story highlights New fossils, discovered in a cave in Belgium reveal that the Neanderthals’ last survivors perished in Europe thousands of years before the earlier estimate New revelations shed light on when Neanderthals really disappeared from Europe. And it turns out, the earlier beings perished way earlier than previously believed. New fossils, discovered in a cave in Belgium reveal that the Neanderthals’ last survivors perished in Europe thousands of years before the earlier estimate. The new study, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, undertaken by a collaborative team from Belgium, Britain, and Germany sheds light on when our closes relative disappeared from the planet.