81–90 of 218 posts
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Do we still depend on bone structure to define species? DNA analysis is indisputable. Its all speculation until that is done.
DNA's half-life is 521 years. http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11...
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Do we still depend on bone structure to define species? DNA analysis is indisputable. Its all speculation until that is done.
A species cannot be clearly defined until you try to mate it with something else and it fails to produce a viable offspring, as far as I'm aware. No DNA analysis is indisputable with what we currently know.
Something I've never understood (since highschool some 30 years ago) is; when getting partial skeletons perhaps from only a single individual, how can they claim new species? I mean what's diff with that and some hypothetical future anthropoligist looking at siberian with roundish skull thicker brow ridges and that of six foot tall masai with long face and then a sub 5 foot native peruvian and declaring them all diff…
What's stopping a future anthropologist from declaring siberians and pygmies to be different species? It's not done now for political reasons, but the future has no reason to be concerned with the past's special sensitivities. Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easi…
Indeed, the differences between long-separated human populations are such that even non-racist scientists acknowledge subspecies..
http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypi...
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Presumably they're close enough to us that if we can recover their DNA we could use gene editing technology to bring them back to life.
Presumably you don't work in a biological field!
"What we are seeing is more and more species of creatures that suggests that nature was experimenting with how to evolve humans, thus giving rise to several different types of human-like creatures originating in parallel in different parts of Africa. Only one line eventually survived to give rise to us," Far out. What if they could make a Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs, extinct human-like species?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we still depend on bone structure to define species? DNA analysis is indisputable. Its all speculation until that is done.
A species cannot be clearly defined until you try to mate it with something else and it fails to produce a viable offspring, as far as I'm aware. No DNA analysis is indisputable with what we currently know.
Pleasantly surprised to see the group photo of the scientists who made the discovery was all female! Is paleontology one of those strongly gender-biased fields, like working in HR, or software development?
"What we are seeing is more and more species of creatures that suggests that nature was experimenting with how to evolve humans, thus giving rise to several different types of human-like creatures originating in parallel in different parts of Africa. Only one line eventually survived to give rise to us," Far out. What if they could make a Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs, extinct human-like species?
My gutshot on hearing that idea is that it's probably unethical to keep clones of primitive human-like species around for our own enjoyment. An early-human zoo strikes me as particularly unpalatable. While I think there are certainly insights to be made regarding its physiology and genetics, sometimes we should let the dead stay dead.