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Another little factlet from Bryson is that we don't know if there are 2 million or 200 million species on Earth, and either number is about equally likely. Another is that raccoons once were were the size of hippos. In fact, at one time, there were a lot of very BIG mammals. One of the biggie explosions almost wiped out the horse family. All but one of the 16 species was wiped out. Where would we be without the horse? A theory is that another of the biggies (I don't remember which one), cut down to homo sapiens to a few thousand on the entire planet, a number at which they remained for a long time. The theory goes on as to that is why the genetics of homo sapiens are so remarkably unvariegated, indeed less variegated across the species as a whole, than one nuclear family of apes.

Have I caught your interest yet?

A theory is that another of the biggies (I don't remember which one), cut down to homo sapiens to a few thousand on the entire planet..

The eruption of the Toba Super Volcano about 80,000 BCE.

A theory is that another of the biggies (I don't remember which one), cut down to homo sapiens to a few thousand on the entire planet, a number at which they remained for a long time. The theory goes on as to that is why the genetics of homo sapiens are so remarkably unvariegated, indeed less variegated across the species as a whole, than one nuclear family of apes.

Have I caught your interest yet?

Way ahead of you...

We Dodged Extinction

Posted by Sabertooth
On News/Activism 01/29/2002 7:23:19 PM PST with 171 comments

ABCNews ^ | Lee Dye
Humanoids are believed to have split off from chimpanzees about 5 million to 6 million years ago. With the passage of all that time, humans should have grown at least as genetically diverse as our “cousins.” That turns out to be not true.
“We actually found that one single group of 55 chimpanzees in west Africa has twice the genetic variability of all humans,” Gagneux says. “In other words, chimps who live in the same little group on the Ivory Coast are genetically more different from each other than you are from any human anywhere on the planet.”