New Study Finds No Last Common Ancestor of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

SciNews ^ | 10-22-2013

[Renfield]

A dental study of 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 hominin species shows that no known species matches the expected profile of the last common ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis and anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides evidence that the lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about 1 million years ago – much earlier than previous studies have suggested.

“Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans. These discrepancies cannot be simply ignored, but they have to be somehow reconciled,” said study first author Dr Aida Gómez-Robles from the George Washington University.

Dr Gómez-Robles and colleagues use techniques of morphometric analysis and phylogenetic statistics to reconstruct the dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match....

[Renfield]

Ping

[GeronL]

Well, we all have to start our family trees all over again

[Red Badger]

They are now all in DC..........

[knarf]

In the beginning, God created ...

[WayneS]

I didn’t know Ringo Starr was a Neanderthal!

[Bryanw92]

Or...modern humans walked out of the Garden of Eden (even if it wasn’t a literal garden and there weren’t literally two people in it) and the Neanderthals evolved from apes.

[DManA]

These anti-evolution sites are getting real clever. Don’t put anything in the site name about the ax they are grinding and trick folks into going.

[Gen.Blather]

“and the Neanderthals evolved from apes.”

Neanderthals are always shown as basically football player Caucasians. Their extra brain size was apparently for a larger visual cortex. (location of size in skulls.) Their eyes apparently had no whites, meaning they were like modern ape eyes. (Eye genes genetically similar to apes.) So, they were most likely nocturnal and had much more developed visual capabilities. They most likely looked like apes and were probably covered with hair like apes. (They survived constant polar temperatures.) Most likely, we were not closely related and probably couldn’t interbreed.

[Boogieman]

Or maybe the Neanderthals were the result of hybridization, rather than evolution:

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

[donmeaker]

Modern Europeans have about 20% Neandertal genes. The rest is from Africa.

Asians have another source of genetic material in addition to Neandertal: Denisovian DNA.

As our ancestors crossed the world, they sometimes made war, but often made love.

All of these must have been close enough to breed, absent gene splicing technology.

[carlo3b]

They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match....

Well, if you take my 1st wife.. .. please.. .. :)

[babble-on]

It’s all so unbelievably stupid. I can’t believe that some parts of the Conservative movement want to declare this to be the line of scrimmage between Left and Right.

[pallmallman]

AMEN!!

[Georgia Girl 2]

He obviously has not seen the GEICO commercials. :-)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Renfield, no ping, something like it has been posted.

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[BroJoeK]

DManA: "These anti-evolution sites are getting real clever."

Thanks for the tip.
I had assumed there might be something legit going on here.
Once it's understood that this is anti-evolution propaganda, then all makes sense...

The truth is, the common ancestor for humans and Neanderthals (named homo antecestors) has always been thought of as circa one million years ago:

"Homo antecessor is an extinct human species (or subspecies) dating from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago...

Homo antecessor may be a common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals.[22][23]
At present estimate, humans have approximately 20,000–25,000 genes and share 99% of their DNA with the now extinct Neanderthal [24] and 95-99% of their DNA with their closest living evolutionary relative, the chimpanzees[25][26]"

donmeaker: "Modern Europeans have about 20% Neandertal genes.
The rest is from Africa."

20% sounds too high:

"Genetic evidence published in 2010 suggests that Neanderthals contributed to the DNA of anatomically modern humans, probably through interbreeding between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago with the population of anatomically modern humans who had recently migrated from Africa.
According to the study, by the time that population began dispersing across Eurasia, Neanderthals genes constituted as much as 1–4% of its genome (roughly equivalent to having one Neanderthal great-great-great-grandparent).[14][15][16]

Ötzi the iceman, Europe's oldest preserved mummy, was found to possess an even higher percentage of Neanderthal ancestry...

"...While modern humans share some nuclear DNA with the extinct Neanderthals, the two species do not share any mitochondrial DNA,[109] which in primates is always maternally transmitted.
This observation has prompted the hypothesis that whereas female humans interbreeding with male Neanderthals were able to generate fertile offspring, the progeny of female Neanderthals who mated with male humans were either rare, absent or sterile.[110]
However, some researchers have argued that there is evidence of possible interbreeding between female Neanderthals and male modern humans.[111][112]"

babble on: "I can’t believe that some parts of the Conservative movement want to declare this to be the line of scrimmage between Left and Right."

Sadly, there is no debate here between Left and Right, since the Left would never stoop to such a debate.
Any debate, such as it is, comes amongst members of "the Right", such as ourselves.

Dare I say it? An equivalent debate on the Left would be between communists and socialists over the best way to destroy American as we once knew it.
No conservative would seriously enter such a "debate".

[donmeaker]

Ozzy Ozbourne had his Genes ‘done’ and he was at 20% Neanderthal.

[donmeaker]

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/march/14-interbreeding-neanderthals

[BroJoeK]

Great link and article, I read the whole thing with much interest.
But it does not support your claim that 20% of Ozzy's ancestors were Neanderthals in the woodshed. ;-)
Indeed, seems to me that would be the article's lead, if true, and indeed would be widely publicized by now.

Instead, the article repeats the now-standard conclusion that Neanderthals are about 2.5% of European & Asian ancestry, or roughly the equivalent of one great-great-great grandpa.

Now that's something new to contemplate, since it appears we are talking about Neanderthal fathers of children who were accepted and raised amongst modern human families...
So, were these Neanderthal men invited in, to live amongst humans -- i.e., as scouts or guides -- or did young human girls run off to, ahem, the woodshed and come home bearing unexpected gifts?
Is it possible that human males are not the only, er ah, indiscriminate members of our species? Ha!