Scientists have ruled out catastrophic climate change as the cause of the extinction of the Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago, according to a paper published Wednesday.

Writing in the journal Nature, a team of international scientists said a study of paleontology records showed no correlation between extreme climate events and three possible time periods for the Neanderthal disappearance.

Neanderthals were a species of primates that were relatives, but not ancestors, of modern humans. They lived in Europe, central Asia, the near East and likely western Siberia for about 100,000 years before their mysterious extinction.

Some scientists have suggested they were killed off by humans taking over their hunting grounds during the middle of the last Ice Age, while others have suggested deteriorating climate conditions.

Solving the mystery has been in part confounded by difficulties in coming up with accurate dates for both the disappearance of the Neanderthals and climate events, said the Nature study's lead author Chronis Tzedakis, a paleoecologist at the University of Leeds.

The authors found a solution to the problem, however, by mapping radiocarbon data directly onto a well-dated paleoclimate archive in Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar, a site some of the latest surviving Neanderthals were thought to have occupied.

The climate data was compared with three possible dates for the Neanderthal extinction: an older set of dates from around 30,000 to 32,000 years ago, a newer set of dates from around 28,000 and a more contentious third set from 24,000 years ago.

The team found the first two possible dates did not correspond to any climate change Neanderthals hadn't already experienced. The expansion of the ice sheets that corresponded with the third date wouldn't have affected the Neanderthals in Gibraltar, the authors said.

"Only the controversial date of 24,000 radiocarbon years for their disappearance, if proven correct, coincides with a major environmental shift," said paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in a statement.

"Even in this case, however, the role of climate would have been indirect, by promoting competition with other human groups."