Neanderthals may have interbred with humans twice

[Religious Dick]

Neanderthals may have interbred with humans twice
April 21st, 2010 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils   

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Homo neanderthalensis, adult male. Image Credit: John Gurche, artist / Chip Clark, photographer
(PhysOrg.com) -- Extinct human species such as Neanderthals may still be with us, at least in our DNA, and this may help explain why they disappeared from the fossil record around 30,000 years ago.

An examination of the DNA of 1,983 people from around the globe suggests that extinct human species such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis interbred with our own ancestors during two separate periods, and their genes remain in our DNA today. The research was carried out by a group of genetic anthropologists from the University of New Mexico, and leader of the team, Jeffrey Long, said the findings mean Neanderthals did not completely disappear, but ?there is a little bit of Neanderthal left over in almost all humans.?

The subjects of the study were drawn from 99 population groups in the Americas, Oceania, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the researchers analyzed over 600 microsatellite positions on the genome, which are sections that can be used rather like fingerprints. Doctoral student Sarah Joyce then developed an evolutionary tree to explain the genetic variations found in the microsatellite positions.

The results were unexpected, but Joyce said the best explanation for the variations was that our human ancestors and the archaic species interbred during two periods after the first Homo sapiens had left Africa: the first in the Mediterranean around 60,000 years ago, and the second in eastern Asia about 45,000 years ago. The group found no evidence of the interbreeding in the DNA of modern Africans included in the study.
The findings suggest that after the first interbreeding populations migrated from the Mediterranean to North America, Europe and Asia. A second interbreeding in Asia then altered the genome of the people who went on to migrate to Oceania.

The findings were presented on 17th April at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists? annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they created a great deal of interest among other researchers in the field, who had been attempting to explain some curious variations in the genome. One researcher, Linda Vigilant from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said the findings may help explain what she called ?subtle deviations? in the genetic variations in the Pacific region.

Other researchers from the Max Planck Institute, led by Svante P??bo, finished sequencing the first draft of the Neanderthal genome last year. (See the PhysOrg article here.) The results are expected to be published soon and may shed more light on the possibility of interbreeding. Earlier research suggested interbreeding did not occur, but unlike P??bo?s latest research these early results were not based on an analysis of the complete genome.

? 2010 PhysOrg.com
"Neanderthals may have interbred with humans twice." April 21st, 2010. www.physorg.com/news191047192.html

[kimba1]

uh

I shouildn`t say this but the dude looks mandarin
a scruffy lookin mandarin
I thought Homo neanderthalensis was less sapien looking

[Michael Tee]

Whoever's doing this research better watch their step.  I remember my university anthropology textbook which claimed that pockets of Neanderthal blood-lines survive to the present day in isolated parts of Europe and illustrated the point with photographs of present-day Aran Islanders, with prominent eyebrow ridges and other facial features that a layman such as I would call Neanderthal.  Boy, this did not sit too well with the Irish!!! 

(The Aran Islands are an isolated part of Ireland.  They were the setting for John Millington Synge's classic comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, about a wandering dolt who becomes a hero by convincing the local villagers that he murdered his obnoxious father.)

[Amianthus]

I thought Homo neanderthalensis was less sapien looking

Actually, side by side, contemporary Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis would have been difficult to tell apart. The latter would have tended to be stockier with thicker bones, but well within normal ranges for both. We were better able to adapt to the ice age, so we survived. A more modern reconstruction of Homo neanderthalensis:

[Religious Dick]

I've heard it said that it's possible that our interbreeding with the Neanderthal is where Europeans picked up such traits as white skin, red hair, blue eyes, etc.

But according to this article, it also interbred with humans a second time in East Asia, more recently, and those aren't notably Asian characteristics. So I don't know how to account for that, unless those were features unique to European Neanderthals.....

[kimba1]

so karen gilliam is a neanderthal


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Gillan

I can live with that

[Plane]

Laitman thinks that Neanderthals breathed more through their noses than modern humans do. From reconstructions of their upper respiratory tract, he has proposed that the Neanderthal larynx was higher up in the throat than it is in modern humans. This probably would have constricted the area behind the mouth, preventing Neanderthals from gulping in cold air and drying out the delicate tissue of the throat and lungs. A high larynx, says Laitman, also suggests that Neanderthals couldn't make the same range of sounds that we can, since a lower larynx allows for a helped larger sound-modifying airspace above it. Tattersall and Schwartz believe that their discovery of yet another basic difference in Neanderthal anatomy supports the view that Neanderthals and modern humans are separate species. In fact, they say, Neanderthal nasal anatomy not only sets Neanderthals apart from other humans but is unique among all primates.

http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/origins/nose.html


To whit, Neanderthals had big noses and whiny voices.

I had a supervisor like that.

[kimba1]

can i get help with context ?

cro mags(us) physically varies almost much as canine
ex.
eskimo- pygmy

wolf- toy poodle

is neanderthal in this group of variations or is it more separate altogether