Neanderthal News

[Beagle]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... hal131.xml

There are so many quotes to post from this article that I'll just let it be and quote nothing. The article and the short film are very mainstream, but good. The rendition of Neanderthals appearance is pretty well done also.

There is so much here to refute by argument that I wouldn't know where to start. I'll just chip away at it.

[Minimalist]

One important clue comes from shreds of DNA from Neanderthal bone being studied by teams in America and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Although it will take a couple of years to reconstruct the entire genetic makeup - genome - of Neanderthals, interbreeding appears unlikely to have been significant, according to the latest findings from Svante Pääbo, head of the Max Planck team.

Probably too much to ask that they wait until the genome is completed before making conclusions about it, huh?

Nice find, Beags.

[fossiltrader]

They still alive we over here now call them poloticians they all live in a place called Canberra as for DNA we pray every day that they never breed lol.

[Leona Conner]

We have many of their relatives over here. They live in Washington DC and some live in state capitols. And in the case of Knoxville, the City/County Building.

[Digit]

Better known as Homo Ludicrous!

[Mayonaze]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... thals.html

[Minimalist]

Writing in the August issue of Current Anthropology, Trinkaus and his colleagues say that the skull supports interpretations of other remains found in France, Romania, and the Czech Republic that also have "archaic" or unusual features suggesting interbreeding.

[Gary Svindal]

I don’t know about you folks, but in my town you can see people dragging their knuckles down the sidewalk on any given day. Folks just tend to stay out of their way. On a field trip to a state mental institution, I once came face to face with a living, breathing male Neanderthal. I was not allowed to check his scull for a groove, but the physical appearance was striking.

Quote: "[Individuals] often cross species boundaries in mating, and [in this case] we are defining the two different species by morphology—these are [all] people. People might see each other, for whatever reason, as potential mates.”

People apparently will breed with anything, and it doesn’t have to be another human. Witness the two men arrested within weeks of each other in Vermont having sex with cows and horses, and recently I was exposed to a photograph of what appeared to be a well-evolved Caucasian female having sex with a horse. If Neanderthals are proven capable on in-breeding with HS, then Neanderthals continue within our own HSS genetics.

Note: I thought the topic was getting too clinical, and I wanted to just get out of the lab for awhile. Cheers

And on another note – What the hell happened to Charlie? The place just isn’t the same without his two bits.

[Digit]

I've got a horrible feeling Gary that one day we are going to find out that HSN was brighter than us, that HSS are the 'cave men'.

[Cognito]

Trinkaus is still on the trail. The morphology of his finds indicate admixture; however, current-day genetics does not indicate a substantial contribution to the HSS genome except possibly for the D allele for brain size. This really makes me wonder what hybrid nuclear DNA would look like and how long it would take genetic drift to remove most if not all of the Neanderthal contribution. Given that HSS and Neanderthals were 99.5% similar, maybe not too long.

I still think there was a Neanderthal in the woodpile.

[Digit]

That's always been my concern as well Cog. But using my well known lack of knowledge of gentics I'm forced to fall back on lagic and ask this.
If your hybrid is X+Y how do know unless you have samples of pure X and pure Y to compare your hybrid with?

[Minimalist]

however, current-day genetics does not indicate a substantial contribution to the HSS genome except possibly for the D allele for brain size.

Of course, we are assuming that the HN and HS DNA were all that different. If they were capable of interbreeding, how different could they be?

[Rokcet Scientist]

however, current-day genetics does not indicate a substantial contribution to the HSS genome except possibly for the D allele for brain size.

Of course, we are assuming that the HN and HS DNA were all that different. If they were capable of interbreeding, how different could they be?

It requires very little difference to not be able to interbreed. Chimps' DNA is less than 2% different from ours! Yet I'm not aware of a homo chimpanzensis walking around.
Oh wait! Bigfoot! And the Yeti! There's your cross!

[Rokcet Scientist]

[...] On a field trip to a state mental institution, I once came face to face with a living, breathing male Neanderthal. I was not allowed to check his scull for a groove, but the physical appearance was striking. [...]

"Field trip to a state mental institution"?
In preparation for a long-stay commitment?
Hey, where are you now anyway?
They have internet in the cuckoo's nest now too?

Anyway, I'll best you one: I once met Homo Erectus. Ha! No, really! It was on the Greek island of Kos. HE was just sitting there, I swear! HSS without frontal lobes...! With a flat skull! No dome! No skull, really.... It was scary! That something like that could even be alive! HE was sitting on the very edge of a deserted little terrace of a café. HE was very small, about 5 feet, in shortsleeved shirt and khaki pants from Walmart. No drink or food. Just sitting there. Looking into the distance, not seeing anything.
I swear it was Homo Erectus with modern clothes on. It was soooo creepy!

[Cognito]

I swear it was Homo Erectus with modern clothes on. It was soooo creepy!

R/S, I noticed a young guy while shopping about 20 years back that stunned me. He had brow ridges as prominent as the avatar you posted with bushy eyebrows. Reddish hair, blue eyes and normal looking forehead, but definitely pronounced HSN or HE brow ridges for sure. Unfortunately for him, that gene turned back on full-time. I often wonder how many of those examples are in the population since we never read about them.