Father of all humankind is 340,000 years old

Yahoo! News | The Sideshow ^ | Thu, Mar 7, 2013 | Eric Pfeiffer

[haffast]

DNA evidence has revealed that the oldest known common male ancestor is 340,000 years old, more than twice as old as previous estimates.

New Scientist reports that the sample comes from a recently deceased man named Albert Perry. After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis.

snip

All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perry’s DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor.

"It's a cool discovery," Jon Wilkins of the Ronin Institute in Montclair, N.J., told New Scientist. "We geneticists have been looking at Y chromosomes about as long as we've been looking at anything. Changing where the root of the Y-chromosome tree is at this point is extremely surprising."

After the initial tests on Perry’s DNA, geneticists at the University of Arizona conducted further tests to confirm the anomaly. The Y chromosome in Perry’s test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon.

University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perry’s DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinct—but not before interbreeding with the more modern version of man.

[exDemMom]

Or ‘we are still a long way’ from knowing just how little of what we think we know is actually true.

I'll be the first one to tell you that we barely know anything, and I'm a scientist.

[null and void]

Is the author suggesting there was an intermediate progenitor—to NOT include Neandertal?

What does it suggest about the history of a wrecked car when the 'car'cass is in Los Angels and in the glove box are gas station receipts from NYC, a later one from Cleveland, and a still later one from Tulsa?

Can you determine with certainty from this that the car passed through Phoenix or Las Vegas or Reno?

[csmusaret]

New headline: Missing Link Discovered in South Carolina!

[Verginius Rufus]

There was a thread a couple of days ago about how eating too much bacon causes a 3% chance of premature death.

So this guy might have lived to 350,200 years if he had just cut back on strips of bacon.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks haffast. After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis... All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perry’s DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor. It means that the earlier studies suffered from severe constraints of data. Multiregionalism ping! Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

The Y chromosome in Perry’s test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon. University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perry’s DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinct...

No, it shows, once again, that the reason for apparent greater genetic variability in Africa isn't due to it being the oldest, it shows that populations are genetically narrowed by isolation.

[SunkenCiv]

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[blam]

“When I was young, we had nothing but pinups of Helen Thomas. And we liked it!”

Hard times for sure.

[Little Bill]

Bingo!

[blam]

"So this guy might have lived to 350,200 years if he had just cut back on strips of bacon. "

Bacon DNA isn't that old.

[TigersEye]

There’s another view on that. He might have lived past 360k if it weren’t for all the nannies nagging him about his diet! ;^)

[TigersEye]

No need for Aliens to explain the oddities and anomalies found in various places.

Would you believe what an alien told you anyway?

[InMemoriam]

Father of all humankind is 340,000 years old

Oh, man! And I forgot to get him a card this year...

[SunkenCiv]

Difficult, maybe. Hard, probably not.

[higgmeister]

Well, isn't that what I said? Then I wondered of the significance of the 140,000 year difference between the two.