h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great links!

Nice question, P7; looks like I'll have a better look around this forum....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

>>"<< Cann, Stoneking and Wilson's (1987) study of mitochondrial DNA found a lack of diversity in the Asian population that would have been expected had these migrants hybridised with the Homo erectus already in the area."

What it was saying (in a badly-phrased way) was that a diversity *would* have been expected if hybrisisation *had* occurred.
That diversity wasn't found (or, rather the *lack* of that diversity *was* found).

They really should have written "...study failed to find the diversity that would have been expected..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-utahdino5may05,0,7047021.story?coll=la-home-headlines.

Huge pit with missing links to dinosaurs found in Utah

http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/courses/121/primatology/taxonomy.html

It depends on how far up the family tree you want to make the distinction.

Family Homanidae currently consists of homo sapiens only. Family Pongidae consists of Orangutans, Gorillas, and Chimpanzees and Bonobos. The latter two, however, are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas and orangutans. The existence of family hominidae is therefore a taxonomic anomaly - we should be classed with the pongidae.

As far as extinct versions and lineages of the hominidae line are concerned, it depends how far you think chimps and humans needed to diverge before being classed as a separate genus, rather than different species of the same genus, and there's no *absolute* answer to that one, no clear dividing line.

Noggin

I was actually being a bit more specific: purely in terms of extinct hominids. Would we class the Neanderthals and other regional variations as 'human', the same way the African version of large-brained Homo in the last 200,000 years is?

Noggin, I hadn't realised that about the Hominidae family, thanks. I wonder if pride and arrogance was the deciding factor in giving us a whole new branch on the tree.

The point I stumbled obout trying to make was that there are several theories about Homo S's role in the end of other Homo groups. Some say absorption including interbreeding and others say extinction through our *pushing out* the other groups in various ways. The genetic evidence has in some cases indicated that there was no interbreeding but nothing conclusive has been found. If in fact we could have interbred with Homo Erectus or others then they would have been human IMO if not in scientific designation.

I find it rather implausible that an entire species could cross-breed itself into extinction. So, at some-point, somebody's people had to out-compete (or slaughter) somebody else's people.

If in fact they could breed then the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The species would not so much become extinct as become a smaller and smaller contributer to the gene pool. As a minority *lesser* member of society they would be seen as a less suitable mate and therefore be bred out of the race. For example, when all present human genetic types are mixed equally in a computer simulation the end result looks like a Melanesian. However it is doubted that will be the end result of human interbredding because of various dominant races have and/or will either produce more offspring or create and environment more friendly to their race.

*an*

marking