Paabo won the Nobel Prize for his work on human evolution, and the HAZU stated on Monday that in his research project concerning the Neanderthal genome, which he had completed in 2010, he had cooperated with this Croatian academy.
The Prize committee says that this Swedish scientist achieved the seemingly impossible task of cracking the genetic code of one of our extinct relatives - Neanderthals.
He also performed the "sensational" feat of discovering the previously unknown relative - Denisovans.
His work helped explore our own evolutionary history and how humans spread around the planet, the committee says.