Tuesday - January 16, 2007

It’s So Easy, Even A Blogger Can Do It

I wonder if they had car insurance? Or if they had cars. If not, were their carts insured according to state law? Finally, has GEICO really been around that long? This will give me much to ponder today. One thing I don’t need to ponder is how there might have been interbeeding between homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course there was. It’s a well-known fact that human males will screw anything even remotely resembling a female. As for Neanderthals disappearing - that’s easy. They had to hide the evidence of their naughty flings. See! It all makes sense. Now ... about that homeowners insurance - I have this little gecko I want you to meet ....

Skull Shows Possible Human/Neanderthal Breeding
_{WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:14pm ET138}

A 40,000-year-old skull found in a Romanian cave shows traits of both modern humans and Neanderthals and might prove the two interbred, researchers reported on Monday.

If the findings are confirmed, the skull would represent the oldest modern human remains yet found in Europe.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will add to the debate over whether modern Homo sapiens simply killed off their Neanderthal cousins, or had some intimate interactions with them first.

DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.

But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull.

The skull, probably that of a teenager, has been dated to 40,000 years ago and shows many modern traits. But it also is a little flatter than most modern Homo sapiens, and exceptionally large upper molars more associated with Neanderthals.

“Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans,” said Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol in Britain, who worked on the study.

It could be “evolutionary reversal” he said—humans changing back into archaic forms. “They could also reflect admixture with Neanderthal populations as modern humans spread through western Eurasia,” Zilhao said in a statement.

“This mixture would have resulted in both archaic traits retained from the Neanderthals and unique combinations of traits resulting from the blending of previously divergent gene pools.”

Modern humans are believed to have spread into Europe around 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, and had completely replaced the older Neanderthals by 30,000 years ago.

But that means at least 10,000 years of living side by side, and artifacts attributed to the more modern humans have been found at Neanderthal sites.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/16/2007 at 03:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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