The skull of the 75,000 year old Neanderthal from the Shanidar cave in Iraq.
Posted on 03/15/2005 7:20:27 AM PST by PatrickHenry
An international team, led by researchers at the Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, have extracted and sequenced protein from a Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraq dating to approximately 75,000 years old. It is rare to recover protein of this age, and remarkable to be able to determine the constituent amino acid sequence. This is the oldest fossil protein ever sequenced. Protein sequences may be used in a similar way to DNA, to provide information on the genetic relationships between extinct and living species. As ancient DNA rarely survives, this new method opens up the possibility of determining these relationships in much older fossils which no longer contain DNA (PNAS Online Early Edition, March 8, 2005).
The research, published in PNAS, presents the sequence for the bone protein osteocalcin from a Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraq, as well as osteocalcin sequences from living primates (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans). The team found that the Neanderthal sequence was the same as modern humans. In addition, the team found a marked difference in the sequences of Neanderthals, human, chimpanzee and orangutan from that of gorillas, and most other mammals. This sequence difference is at position nine, where the crystalline amino acid hydroxyproline is replaced by proline (an amino acid that is found in many proteins). The authors suggest that this is a dietary response, as the formation of hydroxyproline requires vitamin C, which is ample in the diets of herbivores like gorillas, but may be absent from the diets of the omnivorous primates such as humans and Neanderthals, orangutans and chimpanzees. Therefore, the ability to form proteins without the presence of vitamin C may have been an advantage to these primates if this nutrient was missing from the diets regularly, or from time to time.
The skull of the 75,000 year old Neanderthal from the Shanidar cave in Iraq.
This research opens up the exciting possibility of extracting and sequencing protein from other fossils, including earlier humans, as a means of determining the relationships between extinct and living species, and to better understand the phylogenetic relationships.
Love it......Ha...........Ha..........
> So you are saying that vitamin C did not exist at that time?
Incorrect. However, the Neanderthal was a species evolved for the cold. That's clear based on their structure, particularly their nasal passages and sinus cavity. How many oranges do you find growing in the tundra?
Ussher was not the first to try to calculate the length of time from the creation...in the Middle Ages the Byzantines had a reckoning from the creation, and the Jewish calendar puts the creation in 3761 BC (the current year is 5765). There are discrepancies between different manuscripts for the ages of some of the patriarchs in Genesis, and there is disagreement over the length of the period of the Judges.
This is just willful blindness. It's no loss to lose the need for something upon which you cannot rely. The loss of a vulnerability to malnutrition is a gain. At any rate, there's a gain of an ability to form a new protein. The net ability to synthesize proteins is unchanged.
Yes. So?
So what else wouldn't we (the ignorant masses of unwashed humanity) have already guessed???
The list is endless.
Interestingly, the general concensus (prior to Darwin's theory) as to the age of the earth was around 6,000 years based primarily on average population growth of societies and the number of generation from Adam.
Others have already beaten me to the punch when it comes to pointing out what a false and ignorant statement this is. Even during the 1700's (*well* "prior to Darwin") the Earth was recognized (due to multiple indepedent lines of evidence) as being at least millions of years old.
Not exactly brain surgery or quantum physics, but what would a bunch of ignorant 1800's/1900's unwashed bible reading bumkins know anyway.....
Apparently they knew more than some modern people -- such as yourself for example.
It certainly looks like willful blindness to me. The loss of an INvulnerability to malnutrition is a loss. Neanderthal had an INvulnerability, that we don't, so we apparently lost it.
"If" true, then once again we see "devolution" in progress. An ancient ability was to form proteins was loss.
And once again, this is going in the OPPOSITE direction of evolution.
Danny, you are so full of it. No ability to form proteins was lost, the ability to form a protein in an environment short of vitamin C was gained.
Just WOW! Thanks for this article. This opens up whole new ways to map our ancestory and migrations. I'm just flumoxed.
No. Read it again. The neanderthal protein is the same as ours. Fruit-eating primates whose vitamin C supply is assured by their diet have a different protein.
...and all such attempts to derive the age of the Earth from Genesis give a number that is incorrect by a factor of roughly a million.
You'd think that folks would have learned something from the Galileo fiasco, but apparently not.
It certainly looks like willful blindness to me.
Thanks for the honest confession.
The loss of an INvulnerability to malnutrition is a loss. Neanderthal had an INvulnerability, that we don't, so we apparently lost it.
You're completely confused. The article said no such thing.
It does not say that "Neanderthal had an INvulnerability".
It does not say that Neanderthals had anything we don't -- in fact it specifically says that Neanderthals had the *same* protein we do.
It doesn't say that we "lost" anything. It says that we (and Neanderthals, as well as chimps and orangutans) gained the ability to form the protein by using an alternate amino acid which does not require the presence of Vitamin C. This is an *advantage* (not a loss) because shortages of Vitamin C are often a dietary problem for primates in general, and evolving an independence from Vitamin C requirements is an evolutionary *advantage*.
Again, please attempt to learn something about science before you attempt to pontificate upon it.
All right, I misread it.
I thought this was related to the much touted lack of human's and guinea pig's ability to sythesize vitamin C. And therefore I assumed that Neanderthal had it and the rest of us didn't.
So if it's something Human's had all along, and we don't have any proof that human's ever lacked it. They why are we assuming that Human's EVOLVED it?
PETA's gonna be pissed. Our closest relatives and we are all chemically constructed for an omnivorous (including tasty critters) diet.
Very, very few people still believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old. The vast majority of Christian denominations have rejected this view because there is no rational or logical way to ignore the mountains of scientific evidence to the contrary. These denominations have conlcuded that their interpretation of the Bible was incorrect.
The response to your statement is that nobody really cares that a small percentage of irrational people believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
Did that neanderthal have a press card?
> NO ONE PRESENTLY "REALLY" CARES WHAT A NARROW, ATHEISTIC SLICE OF THE OVERALL POPULATION then or now THINKS OR CARES ABOUT
Wow. Do you *honestly* believe that geologists have, since the early 1700's, been pretty uniformly atheist?
Even so: you'd be wrong that nobody cares. The petrochemical industry, and everybody who relies upon products of the petrochemical industry (that would be you, son), cares very much that the geologists get it right. And part of getting it right is understanding that the world is far older than 6000 years. The lines of evidence that show the Earths incredible age also shopw where the oil and coal are.
Again, read the book I mentioned. Back in 1815 Bill Smith was showing how to use such knowledge to find coal and dig canals.
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