Posted on 05/15/2015 1:52:19 PM PDT by Red Badger
A Neanderthal skeleton, left, compared with a modern human skeleton. Credit: American Museum of Natural History
DNA testing of a human mandible fossil found in Romania has revealed a genome with 4.8 to 11.3 percent Neanderthal DNA—its original owner died approximately 40,000 years ago, Palaeogenomicist Qiaomei Fu reported to audience members at a Biology of Genomes meeting in New York last week. She noted also that she and her research team found long Neanderthal sequences. The high percentage suggests, she added, that the human had a Neanderthal in its family tree going back just four to six generations. The finding by the team provides strong evidence that humans and Neanderthals continued breeding in Europe, long after their initial co-mingling in the Middle East (after humans began migrating out of Africa.)
Last year, Fu and her team published a paper describing DNA analysis of a human bone fragment found in an unknown place in Siberia. Dated at 45,000 years old, the team found evidence of Neanderthal DNA, but more importantly, because it was remarkably well preserved, the relic served to strengthen a slower mutation rate than many in the field were embracing. In this new effort, Fu and her team also found that the jawbone (which still had some teeth in it) had visible Neanderthal traits, such as enlarged wisdom teeth. The jawbone was found in a cave accessible only by diving through a watery corridor back in 2002, and has been an object of study ever since. The high percentage of Neanderthal DNA is in sharp contrast to modern out-of-Africa humans, which typically have approximately one to four percent Neanderthal genes.
This latest finding, along with the bone found in Siberia and others in Europe has eroded the belief that human interbreeding with Neanderthals occurred only in the Middle East. It now seems possible that humans and Neanderthals were living in the same geographic areas over the course of five thousand years, which would of course explain why their DNA appears in every person not directly descended from people in Africa, on the planet. What is still a mystery, though, is what happened to the Neanderthal? Why did they disappear even as humans continued on? Eerily, this new evidence suggests that the two were interbreeding very nearly right up to the time when the Neanderthals ceased to exist.
More information: Fu, Q., An early modern human with a recent Neandertal ancestor, talk: meetings.cshl.edu/abstracts/genome2015_absstat.html
Ron Perlman is from Romania, isn’t he?
Michelle?
Sounds like my last date.
quick someone check his DNA..before he “evolves”
From Wiki:
Perlman was born in Washington Heights, New York.
For your ping list.
And in some of the present-day crop of humanity, the Neanderthal characteristics overshadow the “modern human” characteristics.
Your example is a case in point.
Neanderthals were not non-human; they were another branch of humanity. God's children.
the progeny migrated south and settled in the Arabian peninsula
In the Bible, the Edomites, descendants of Esau, Jacob’s brother, were described as a ‘hairy’ people........
[ Neanderthals were not non-human; they were another branch of humanity. God’s children. ]
Yup, there is more variations in dog skeletons and if you compare skeletons of a bulldog to a greyhound you would swear they were different species, but they can interbreed.
They do that in Baltimore, Detoilet, Croakland and other cities, too.
If humans originated in Africa, why don’t Africans have Neanderthal DNA? Are Neanderthals not considered human?
That explains Camilla Gorilla................
I think the Neanderthals left Africa waay before the second major migration out of Africa, so the DNA may be too distant to show up..................
What happened to the "N" people is quite obvious. The Cro-Magnon guys had better clothes, nicer jewelry, flashier weapons that did not require them to arm-wrestle with dangerous wild beasts, etc. etc. In short they were taller, sleeker babe magnets who scored off all the warm sexy Neandertal cave babes while the earnest, plodding "N" men were off doing their dangerous hunting thing, only to return to their cave consorts, who already had Cro-Magnon pups in the oven.
By the time the Neandertals knew what was up, they weren't really so Neandertal any more, rapidly becoming the pomaded and perfumed fast-talking, sharp dressing Ilya Nastase/Alexandra Dulgheru type Rumanian (Romanian?? Roumnanian????)) tennis players we know and love today.
WWII Orders to the Roumanian Officer Corps: "Make-up will not be worn in combat! This means you!"
The Italians, Hungarians, and Rumanians served together with the NAZIs on the Russian front. The Italians' job was to keep the Hungarians from attacking the Romanians, and to keep the Roumanians from stealing their food and equipment, such as it was. The Romanians and Hungarians caused about 36 Russian casualties, mostly by accident while trying to shell each other over the heads of the feckless Italians placed between them.
So yeah, the Neandertals are still with us and in us. Maybe more so if we have a Romanian connection?
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