Posted on 10/26/2009 3:33:00 PM PDT by Dysart
Modern man and Neanderthals had sex across the species barrier, according to leading geneticist Professor Svante Paabo.
Professor Paabo, who is director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, made the claim at a conference in the Cold Springs Laboratory in New York.
But Prof Paabo said he was unclear if the couplings had led to children, of if they were capable of producing offspring.
"What I'm really interested in is, did we have children back then and did those children contribute to our variation today?" he said in an article in The Sunday Times.
"I'm sure that they had sex, but did it give offspring that contributed to us? We will be able to answer quite vigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence."
The phenomenon is already seen in modern animals such as horses and zebras, and lions and tigers, but resulting offspring have always been infertile.
In recent years, fossils with both Neanderthal and modern human features have been found suggesting the two species interbred but previous scans of Neanderthal genes reveal Neanderthal DNA to have a very different make-up to modern man's.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
well, it’s a target rich post.
It was only one time and nobody was supposed to find out.
Yes, I expect Helen Thomas to make an appearance by post #6 or I be mightily disappointed.
Any port in a storm, I guess...
Homo erectus?
I’ll shoot. Against all science, I firmly believe that
the neanderthals are still with us today. All you need
to is look around to see them in the malls, on the road.
Seriesly..have they tested everyone’s DNA?
The first person who posts Hellen Thomas.I swear...
based on what evidence?
The picture up top looks just like a guy I work with.
I saw him in a cage fight once.
Is that why some men have sex with sheep—it’s a genetic holdover from having sex with neaderthals?
Pingy
This explains James Carville, Rahm Emanuel and Paul Begala, among others.
Prolly happened around closing time at the “Cave-Inn”, after Modern Man had about a dozen brewskis in him and ALL the Neanderthal Women turned into Midnight Beauties ...
So have I but that was a long time ago, too.
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