Posted on 10/29/2007 5:17:44 AM PDT by Renfield
ANSA) - Florence, October 26 - A new study of Neanderthal bones in Italy and Spain claims to have proved they did not breed with humans - potentially settling one of the biggest riddles in anthropology.
The DNA study, which involved Italian, Spanish and German scientists, examined fossilised bones found in the northern Italian mountains near Verona and a cave in Asturia, Spain.
Analysing a gene involved in the production of the skin pigment melanin, the team concluded that Neanderthals were predominantly fair-skinned and red-headed - like many people in countries like Ireland, Scotland and Wales today.
This was consistent with past studies which however suggested that inter-breeding could have produced today's traits - triggering vocal reactions in the countries concerned.
By contrast, the new study concluded that the Neanderthals developed the skin and hair traits on their own, and did not pass them on to any human group.
"The study enabled us to verify that the Neanderthals evolved these features independently of homo sapiens," said Florence University's David Caramelli, who led the Italian part of the research.
"We can therefore rule out any possible interbreeding between the two species," he said.
"The surprising thing is that there was a sort of evolutionary convergence in two species, independently of each other," Caramelli said.
The study, which appears in Friday's edition of the journal Science, comes less than a year after two leading US research groups came to opposing conclusions about the interbreeding question.
Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Antrhopology is currently trying to settle the issue by deciphering the Neanderthal genome.
The Neanderthals, who appeared about 150,000 years ago, became extinct some 15,000 years after homo sapiens migrated to Europe 40,000 years ago.
It is not known whether humans killed them, out-competed them, or simply watched them die out as their Ice Age- friendly characteristics became a liability.
Long a byword for caveman-like stupidity, the Neanderthal is now thought to have been an intelligent species which could speak and used fairly sophisticated tools. It shares 95% of its genes with humans.
Just reading the words "penile fracture" causes me to wince.
So...got any interesting "lodged object" stories?
Given the lawless environment, lack of civilization, and strength of male biological urges, I have a hard time believing there was no copulation between males of one species and unwilling females of the other. For scientists to suggest otherwise is just simply stupid.
Post 23 and still no Helen Thomas pictures? Egads.
jas3
Most memorable was a broken pencil stuck in a pencil.
Thanks to the splintered end, it couldn’t be backed out; the only option was ‘gently’ moving it into the bladder, then removing it.
Then there was the nursing supervisor who got her way when she demanded the deputy uncuff his prisoner....
Or the former head nurse of the burn unit, who set herself on fire three times...the final (fatal) time after escaping a locked psych unit.
LOL!
I have a hard time believing there was no copulation between males of one species and unwilling females of the other.
_______
Copulation and breeding are not synonymous.
Breeding requires the production of offspring. Copulation, uh, doesn’t.
“How else does one explain Chelsea?
Well, Web Hubbell isn’t the best looking guy in the world!
They were too busy breeding with women.
Praise be to Osiris.
jas3
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