The Kebara 2 individual (K2), an adult Neanderthal male, was found in the early 1980s during excavation at the Kebara cave on Mount Carmel (Israel) and is dated to around 60 ka (Arensburg, 1989; Bar-Yosef and Vandermeersh, 1991; Valladas et al., 1991). Because the remains are fairly complete and well preserved, this individual has been used as a reference Neanderthal male in studies of biological aspects such as body size and shape, locomotion, obstetrics or bioenergetics (Rak and Arensburg, 1987; Ruff, 1991, 2002; Tague, 1992; Churchill, 2006; Froehle and Churchill, 2009; Kramer and Sylvester, 2009; Weaver and Hublin, 2009; Holliday, 2012).

This research was funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (project numbers: CGL2015-63648-P, MAT2013-48426-C2-1-R and HAR2016-78036-P) and the Leakey Foundation (Project 29027). D.G.M. was funded by the European Commission's Research Infrastructure Action via the Synthesys Projects (DK-TAF-3494, BE-TAF-5639, DE-TAF-6404 and SE-TAF-6406) and also by the American Museum of Natural History via a collection study grant. D.G.M. thanks Spanish INEM (Instituto Nacional de Empleo) for its funding support via unemployment benefits.

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