In Riastrad
- puts on anthropology goggles*
This discovery is monumental! The only term to express the magnitude of the event is HOLY SHIT!
My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
For a moment, I thought this was about Australopithecus sediba
. And it hasn't been all that long since Ardi. How many unknown ancestors do we have, anyways?
Well, if they can interbreed with homo sapiens, most people wouldn't call them a new 'species', just a new subspecies or type.
Hmm... so they were more distantly related to us than the neanderthals were, but still could interbreed with us? So does this mean the theory that we interbred with neanderthals rather than competing them to extinction is more likely to be correct?
Be not afraid...
Not necessarily, the reason it isn't popular is because they aren't able to isolate any Neanderthal specific genes in anyone and while this could mean they're just that similar, people aren't yet willing to say lack of proof is the proof.
Also, this is very cool.
The Joke-Master
I don't like that article. I took a class on physical anthropology a couple years ago, and the current (at that time) data showed the Neanderthals were too genetically distant from humans for us to interbreed. If these were even more distant from us than Neanderthals, how could they have interbred with humans?
And apparently they co-existed and interbred with homo sapiens sapiens
.
Not sure if I've got the taxonomic terms entirely correct...
edited 22nd Dec '10 2:05:28 PM by pagad
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.