Posted on 11/15/2006 8:36:11 PM PST by Graybeard58
Humans' closest cousins, the Neanderthals, vanished 30,000 years ago after sharing turf with humans for millenniums. But why they disappeared remains a mystery.
Two research teams decided to try a new approach: Instead of studying tiny fragments of DNA from one of these cousins, they looked for ways to string fragments together to get a more complete source of potential genetic clues. Conventional wisdom held that this task was impossible for material this old. But using the 38,000-year-old remains of a 38-year-old male, found in a Croatian cave, each group now says it has rebuilt, or sequenced, long segments of Neanderthal DNA - the twisted, ladder-shaped molecule in the nucleus of cells that holds an organism's genetic blueprint.
The technique is not only yielding new insights into Neanderthals, reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature and Friday's issue of Science, it's also likely to prove an important tool in teasing out secrets about how plants and animals evolved, researchers say. DNA "is the ultimate forensic record of evolution," says Sean Carroll, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There's never been a more exciting time to be an evolutionary biologist."
Within the next two years, one team hopes to finish a rough draft of the Neanderthal's full genome. This would help scientists answer nagging questions about the Neanderthals' evolutionary history, including factors contributing to their demise. It also would yield insights into the evolutionary history of modern humans.
"We are at the dawn of Neanderthal genomics," says Dr. Rubin, with the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif. He likens the effort to those of archaeologists who deciphered hieroglyphics to learn about ancient Egyptians in detail.
The results that will be published this week are "really a big teaser," says Anne Stone, who heads
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Ping
No need to look for descendants of Neanderthals...
They are all registered democrats.
I thought they do Geico commercials?
Fascinating article---thanks!
Did you post this to General/Chat or did it get moved?
I posted it here, preempting a move by the mods.
I just hope, that when they get around to making a couple of clones from this DNA, and implanting them in host mothers, raising them up to determine their ability to speak and their general intelligence, that ...
... in twenty or thirty years, GEICO will still be in business to give them jobs.
YEC INTREP
:')
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The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer'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]
by James Shreeve
Thanks for the ping. Ignore all the rest.
mtDNA does not show this to be the case.
The days of paleontologists and physical anthropologists doing their Neanderthal studies only on morphology are drawing to a close.
Morphology is a limited tool, and the mtDNA evidence that is starting to accumulate is eclipsing it quickly.
To me this is both sad and encouraging. I did a lot of morphometrics in grad school, using multivariate stats. I used these techniques on skeletal populations during the last 6,000 years, but others have been using them on fossil specimens, including Neanderthal.
With the advent of mtDNA studies they are now going to a new level of analysis. As much as I love morphometrics, the critical Neanderthal questions are now being answered using DNA.
Humans have 3 billion base pairs in our DNA. 99.95% leaves a difference of 1.5 million base pairs. Neandertals were not human. Every bit of DNA evidence to date says one thing: "He's dead, Jim".
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