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.
How do Jewish scholars notate events which occurred before their 0 year?
Interesting because hydroxyproline is seldom found in proteins other than collagen. In that osteocalcin is a bone protein, and bone and connective tissue are intimately interconnected, I wonder if there are any sequence homologies.
> is no way there were that many critters to make that much oil
ERRRR. Remember, we're talking about time frames of *hundreds* of millions of years.
> the researcher makes a good point that those critters had to be a lot deeper than where the actual oil is found in order to even be converted to petroleum
That's nice. And those critters *were* deeper than the oil currently is.
> Mt St Helen's for instance; Coal is already forming under the debri fields and at surprisingly shallow depths.
Compare that arguement to the one you just made above: "need to be deep =/ can be real shallow." One of them is wrong, as coal can be converted to oil relatively easily, geologically speaking.
> Nasa was shocked when they only discovered at the max an average of 1/4" of lunar dust.
No, they weren't.
> The known natural rate of pressure depletion (loss) in unreleased gas fields flys in the face of the old earth theory.
Except, of course, for the little problem that oil/natural gas production is an ongoing process.
The science is NOT conflicting. The science is supporting. What is conflicting is YEC who wish to twist certain scientific explanations of facts (theories) to ensure they get to keep their literal reading of Genesis in tact.
Back to Petrochemicals; The known natural rate of pressure depletion (loss) in unreleased gas fields flys in the face of the old earth theory. The gas pressures are currently to high to support old earth theory, suggesting a much younger earth.
Please provide ALL of your scientific articles and links published by reputable scientific magazines.
> It is known that the earth's magnetic field is weakening by half every 1400 years.
Never saw a sine wave, huh? Never saw fluctuations in the stock market, waves on the ocean, noticed the cycles of sunspots? Up-and-down is normal, and often reverses itself on a regualr basis.
> It is also know that the magnetic field is absolutely required to be at certain levels to support life (promote healthy cell interaction/duplication) at all.
Wrong.
> If it is to great nothing can live.
The magnetic field from the monitor in front of you is likely several times stronger than the Earths magnetic field. Critters, humans included, regularly live in magnetic fields *far* more powerful than the Earth's. Frogs have been levitated by magnetic fields with no ill effects.
> If it gets to weak things begin to mutate and die
Everythign dies. And mutation is, on the whole, a good thing as it drives evolution.
> This is only one reason why humans will never survive on planets with weak magnetic fields e.g. the moon, mars or planets with very very strong magnetic fields. It has to be just right.....
I'm sorry, but that's just damned funny. I've been studying manned spaceflight and space colonization for two decades, and never have I seen such silliness. Magnetic fields in and of themselves do not effect organic systems much at all. Go to the hardware store, buy the strongest magnet you can buy and hold it in your hand or tape it to a mouse. The field will do nothing.
Except make some people rich selling magnets.
Starting around post 49, we have some petroleum-geology posts you may find interesting.
All stages in the formation of oil/coal are ongoing. This is hardly surprising. It not like sedimentation, vulcanism, decay and the like suddenly stopped a million years ago...
> Don't animals and plant life decompose more quickly than in 1000 years ????
Not always. Look up "bog people."
But you still don't have evidence of humans without the ability to synthesize the protein, so you don't have any evidence of evolution.
A more likely scenario is that human's originally was originally designed with both the ability to synthesize vitamin C as well as the ability to generate this protein whether or not they had vitamin C.
Humans, primates and guinea pigs all lost the ability of synthesize vitamin C but still have the pseudogene.
We know that the body often can compensate for the loss of some functionality. For examine, a loss of a kidney or eye, or a gall bladder, or an appendix and still function although at a suboptimal level. Thus an original design that included vitamin C sysnthesis as well as the ability to generate protein in the absence of vitamin C would be consistent with the redundancy that we often find designed in the human body.
Not to mention magnets.
The abstract shows itself to be rather lame within the first few sentences:
"It is p ointed out here how all such predictions have depended fundamentally upon an archaic hypothesis from the 18th century that petroleum somehow (miraculously) evolved from biological detritus..."
Miraculous? Tell these peopel about "miracles:"
http://www.changingworldtech.com/information_center/press_releases.asp?id=19
They use technology that replicates the geological processes that made oil, to turn "biological detritus"... into oil. Ain't no miracle, ain't magic... it's just a technological application of a natural process.
At least it's not edited. It's the author's own work.
I interpreted that to mean that vitamin C was less common in the diet available to Neanderthals, not non existent.
Cluelessly vague-sounding non sequitur. One whole limb of the primate tree with omnivore dietary habits has a unique osteocalcin. This is not the only fact in the universe. There's a bigger picture.
Humans and chimps also have the same cytochrome C molecule, something we share with no other species. Humans and chimps also have the same cytochrome C gene save for one silent mutation. And there's that pseudogene thing which would have us still synthesizing vitamin C had it not been stomped on by some ancient mutation. There's the mutational drift in the pseudogene since it became a pseudogene. There's retrotransposon evidence that humans and chimps have common ancestry not shared with any other species.
But, of course, you don't know anything at all of the big picture. You wave every tiny piece of it away whenever and wherever presented. "Mountain? What mountain?" All you know of the 29+ Evidences when you see it linked is that that means it's time to link Ashby Camp's made-to-be-waved-about-and-not-read rebuttal. You don't really know anything.
You're the poster boy for what ID would turn out if it were taught in our schools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.