1. Home
  2. Electronics Design
  3. OT: Neanderthals and Denisovians

OT: Neanderthals and Denisovians

This week' issue of the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science has an interesting article on the conclusions that can be drawn from our genome and what we known of the Neanderthal and Denisovian genomes that we have got

formatting link

It seems that we all split from a common ancestor about 25,900 generations ago, and the Neanderthals and Denisovians split only some 300 generations later.

Whatever the genetic innovation might have been, it seems to have helped the creatures who carried it to invade new areas and get isolated from one another.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney (but not part of the branch that invaded Australia some 60,000 years ago, some 2,400 generations back).
Reply to
bill.sloman
Loading thread data ...

That's a currently fashionable academic research area.

A couple of years ago I went to an interesting museum/university lecture discussing how it looks many different branches of the human evolutionary "tree" split and rejoined many times over the past 1MYr or so.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

The fossil record is a bit sparse to let us talk about splitting and rejoining.

So far we seem to have found exactly one chimpanzee fossil

formatting link

and one 8-million year old gorilla-like fossil

formatting link

Hominids seem to have been marginally more numerous, but we don't have nearly enough fossil samples to say anything all that meaningful.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Indeed.

The research was based around the genome of various humans around the world. The lecturer said it was speculative, but obviously there were sufficient indications for it to be an active area of research.

Given the low sample count of fossil skeletons, and the variability in contemporary skeletons, I would expect the genome to give information that is at least as good.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.