[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Darksheare.

The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans. Until now, Denisovans were known only from DNA retrieved from 80,000-year-old remains in Siberia, 4,000 miles east of where the new DNA was found.

Gosh, it's almost as if each of us loses half of the genetic information found in our parents, just as they lost half of their parents', etc. And best of all, that means that we don't get the same amount from each of our grandparents, and this process works for each previous and subsequent generation -- basically, we have 46 family trees which follow back along each half of each chromosome. By the time we reach those 64 4th-great-grandparents, at least 18 of them have passed down nothing at all.

[null and void]

By the time we reach those 64 4th-great-grandparents, at least 18 of them have passed down nothing at all.

At least not to you, but perhaps to your cousins, second cousins, third cousins, nth cousins...

[Fred Nerks]

sorry...just couldn't resist...

[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]