Posted on 11/08/2006 11:15:23 PM PST by FLOutdoorsman
Scientists are reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals - the close relations of modern man.
The ambitious project involves isolating genetic fragments from fossils of the prehistoric beings who originally inhabited Europe to map their complete DNA.
The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago - at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent.
Lead researcher Dr Svante Paabo, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said: "This would be the first time we have sequenced the entire genome of an extinct organism."
But the prospect of using the genome to produce a living Neanderthal has been ruled out.
A popular caricature portrays Neanderthals as beetle-browed brutes - but this is far from the truth, reports New Scientist.
"Neanderthals were sophisticated stone-tool makers and made razor-sharp knives out of flint," said Dr Richard Klein, an anthropologist at Stanford University, California.
"They made fires when and where they wanted and seem to have made a living by hunting large mammals such as bison and deer."
Neanderthals also buried their dead, which, fortunately for researchers, increases the odds of the bones being preserved.
"By sequencing their entire genome we can begin to learn more about their biology," said Dr Eddy Rubin, a geneticist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Walnut Creek, California.
The genetic questions could also solve the biggest mystery of all - why did Neanderthals die out while modern humans went on to conquer the globe?
Dr Paabo and colleagues pioneered the genetic study of Neanderthals by extracting and decoding fragments of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the bones of the original specimen, discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley in Germany.
The mtDNA Dr Paabo sequenced suggested humans split from Neanderthals about 500,000 years ago - which fits neatly with the fossil record. It also suggested Neanderthals did not interbreed with our ancestors.
Dr Paabo's team have selected two Neanderthal specimens to work on based on the fact both have "clean" DNA that is relatively uncontaminated.
One is a 38,000-year-old fossil from Vindija, Croatia. The other is the original specimen, which, despite being extensively handled, has unusually clean DNA in its right upper arm bone.
During its lifetime the individual lost the use of its left arm after breaking it and had to rely on the right arm - causing the bones to grow thicker and denser than usual.
After death this shielded the DNA from contamination. The researchers are also hunting for new specimens that can be sampled before other people get their hands on them.
They have so far sequenced about a million base pairs of nuclear DNA from the Croatian fossil and hope to publish a draft of the whole genome in two years.
"It is definitely possible to sequence the entire genome from such well-preserved specimens," said Dr Eske Willerslev, an expert in ancient DNA at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
"Perhaps the biggest difficulty will be verifying the sequences obtained are genuinely from the Neanderthal genome and not a contaminant - as so much of it will be identical to the human genome."
The genome is sure to fuel the particularly intense controversy that has surrounded a much-vaunted aspect of human uniqueness - language.
"There's been a debate going for more than 30 years about the speech capabilities of Neanderthals," says Dr Philip Lieberman, a cognitive scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
"It's clear from the fossil record and comparisons with modern humans that Neanderthals could speak."
But the prospect of the genome providing the blueprint for resurrecting a living "Jurassic-Park-style" Neanderthal is unlikely.
Dr Paabo said: "We would be able to create a physical Neanderthal genome but we will not be able to recreate a Neanderthal - even if we wanted to."
No need to re-create the genome. The Neanderthals are alive and well, and are indeed thriving and walking right among us. I personally know a few, and met a bunch of them on various occasions, and I'm far from alone in that.
What a bunch of hooey. 6,000 years ago the Earth didn't even exist, never mind 35,000 years. Typical evolutionist mumbo jumbo.
They call it downs syndrome now.
Somewhere it was reported that they existed to at least 19,000 years ago, in a cave on Gibralter. Also, they actually mined TIN underground in Belgium, using antlers for scraping tools(fossils found therewith). On the Discovery Special it was opined that they just didn't reproduce as fast as homo sap(2% differential).
Many Ukrainian and black Russians still sport a uni-brow, are very hairy and fashion crude tools.
Ganesh particle BTTT.
That would only make sense to an evolutionist. They were too dumb to make shovels, so they used antlers to scrape cassiterite out of mines to toss in their smelters to make tin.
Considering Neanderthals were fully human, complete language is still unique among all physical creatures (so excluding angels) to humans.
..and they also could understand how to sign up for Geico insurance.
ROTFL! I needed that...now if you were serious, it would have been even more funny.
Yep.
They're creating a whole new minority class(and democrat voters)...
Yes, we know. And now they control the House AND the Senate.
Sorry. Thanks for the interesting post on something important other than the election. Please excuse my cynicism, I hope you'll understand.
"I'm telling you guys, Neanderthal Park is the future!"
Yes, it was a Scientific American article many years ago now : somewhere in Belgium or thereabouts they found both neanderthal bones and antler-tools in a tin mine, cassiterite, as you say, was what they were after for smelting. That in turn means that they weren't quite as dumb as they've often been portrayed. As to speech, the absense of the hypoloid throat bone is supposedly evidence that they couldn't speak like we do(spectrum of voice sounds), but look at the arabic languages : they communicate with hand/body gestures as much as with the spoken word.......Then look at the Basque language, unrelated to any other language(Lapp language too). Now if it's true that the last neanderthals died out in and around Gibraltar circa 19,000 years ago, could it be that spanish Basque is somehow a daughter language? This is speculative of course : homo sap has been traced to about 125,000 BC, to the original "eve". We even see the tabu volcano/nuclear winter in our "squeezed" mitochondrial DNA at 74,000 BC. So suppose that a DNA breakthrough occurred somewhere between 35,000 BC and 20,000 BC : homo sap and neanderthal COULD mate. Too late for the neanderthal genes to be spread throughout the entire homo sap population due mostly to "ogre" fears/cultural differences, like copulating with a monkey to homo sap, but a remnant population of mixed genes developed the Basque language as distinct from all other languages. Has anyone ever looked closely at Basque DNA?
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