[Ahban]

INteresting, but I don't see how it can help in our friendly debates- or all our other debates either!

If a Bison is only 1 acid different from a cow even though a million years separates them, it is not a very precise test. Also, I am pretty sure that there is more than one way to create a given protien. In other words, different genes could make the same protien. All this test measures is the protien, not the gene, so it would miss it when this happened.

[Nebullis]

If a Bison is only 1 acid different from a cow even though a million years separates them, it is not a very precise test.

A couple of comments. The precision seems to be quite good. The particular protein, osteocalcin, may not be very informative or specific for short time-frames, such as 55,000 years in the case of the bison, but it will be informative for long time frames. Can you see now how that can be a useful way of extracting more information from ancient fossils?