Posted on 05/20/2010 11:03:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A newly released study published in Science magazine raises new questions about ancient life by concluding much of the DNA from Neanderthal specimens is "within the variation of present-day humans for many regions of the genome."
The scientific team that came up with the result, published in a recent issue of Science, included dozens of members of the research community and was led by ancient-DNA expert Svante Paabo, who works at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
According to a report in Time magazine, the team reconstructed almost two-thirds of the Neanderthal genome – only some 10 years after the modern human genome first was mapped – by extracting DNA from bone fragments of samples found in the 1970s and 1980s in Croatia.
The resulting comparison of DNA to modern samples from around the globe found: "Neanderthals often share derived single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) alleles with present-day humans."
The study's authors found that the results argue against "the simplest version of an 'out-of-Africa' model for modern human origins" but did support the perspective that "the vast majority of genetic variants that exist at appreciable frequencies outside Africa came from Africa with the spread of anatomically modern human."
David Menton, staff member with Answers in Genesis, told WND that part of the complication of the entire issue is that some scientists believe Neanderthal was a separate creature, while those who follow a biblical understanding of the earth and its residents likely perceive Neanderthal as one among many variations of what God created as "man."
Menton, an expert on anatomy, is a member of the American Association of Anatomists. He was profiled in "American Men and Woman of Science," named "Professor of the Year" in 1998 by the Washington University School of Medicine Class of 2000
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
“With thousands of sequences of DNA something must be similar some where”
Same maker perhaps???
Quite possible.
It is very interesting that some SNP’s come up as similar between different animal, humans and species. These must be truly small, atomic or sub-atomic level.
Interesting. Fascinating.
Beats the run-of-the-mill news we are so accustomed to out of Washington DC.
I'm talking here about real basic math and statistics -- you got a numerator, you got a denominator, you do the division and come up with a percentage. If I understand the first two, then I know what the last one means.
In this particular case, I do understand that 3 million base-pair differences amongst humans and Neanderthals is one-tenth of one percent of the 3 billion total.
What I don't understand is how we go from that to saying 1% or 4% of human DNA came from Neanderthals.
This is not complex math, it just in how we define our terms.
Even that math makes me want someone to get out a pencil and sit down and help me a little.... ;) I blame new math when I started 7th grade. It made me feel completely stupid.
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