Posted on 09/13/2015 1:17:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In a remarkable technical feat, researchers have sequenced DNA from fossils in Spain that are about 300,000 to 400,000 years old and have found an ancestor -- or close relative -- of Neandertals. The nuclear DNA, which is the oldest ever sequenced from a member of the human family, may push back the date for the origins of the distinct ancestors of Neandertals and modern humans, according to a presentation here yesterday at the fifth annual meeting of the European Society for the study of human evolution.
Ever since researchers first discovered thousands of bones and teeth from 28 individuals in the mid-1990s from Sima de los Huesos ("pit of bones"), a cave in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain, they had noted that the fossils looked a lot like primitive Neandertals. The Sima people, who lived before Neandertals, were thought to have emerged in Europe. Yet their teeth, jaws, and large nasal cavities were among the traits that closely resembled those of Neandertals, according to a team led by paleontologist Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University of Madrid. As a result, his team classified the fossils as members of Homo heidelbergensis, a species that lived about 600,000 to 250,000 years ago in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many researchers have thought H. heidelbergensis gave rise to Neandertals and perhaps also to our species, H. sapiens, in the past 400,000 years or so.
But in 2013, the Sima fossils' identity suddenly became complicated when a study of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the bones revealed that it did not resemble that of a Neandertal. Instead, it more closely matched the mtDNA of a Denisovan, an elusive type of extinct human discovered when its DNA was sequenced from a finger bone from Denisova Cave in Siberia.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Phunny PHriend.
Yes. It’s ‘settled Science’ afterall. Their own numbers. Their own ‘science’. And when combined with their wonder-twins powers they become “Settled Science”. I just put them together and I gotta think I’m far from the first.
The PROBLEM is that you will never see anyone with a microphone and a science degree bring it up for bear of blacklisting. But the numbers are there. Unless they wish to disavow their own ‘science’.
Thanks many muches.
My pleasure!
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