RE: Cave art discovery in Indonesia force rethink of origin of art.
October 10, 2014 at 10:13 pm
(This post was last modified: October 10, 2014 at 10:16 pm by Anomalocaris.)
It maybe significant enough so that Neanderthal female to human male coupling can not produce fertile offspring. All neanderthal genetic contribution To HSS gene pool seems to have come from Neanderthal males. No Neanderthal female appears to have interbred with HSS and left a line of descendants that lasted to the present. That could either be because offspring of Neanderthal female to HSS male pairing has some genetic short comings, so while they are fertile, the line has some genetic disadvantage that caused them to die out, or such offsprings were simply infertile due to incompatibility between Neanderthal and HSS genome.
The second case is enough to definitively make Neanderthal a separate species by classical definition of species. The first case would still make a good argument that Neanderthal should be classified as a different species.
Off course it is possible social factors make Neanderthal female to HSS male pairing much more rare than the reverse, so rare that evidence has been diluted to invisibility. If that is the case, then it maybe that Neanderthals and HSS are the same species. But at the moment it's hard to tell.
The second case is enough to definitively make Neanderthal a separate species by classical definition of species. The first case would still make a good argument that Neanderthal should be classified as a different species.
Off course it is possible social factors make Neanderthal female to HSS male pairing much more rare than the reverse, so rare that evidence has been diluted to invisibility. If that is the case, then it maybe that Neanderthals and HSS are the same species. But at the moment it's hard to tell.
