Another one flying in the faces of creationist - Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens had sex

[abaris]

Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared in Europe approximately 39,000–41,000 years ago but they have contributed 1–3% of the DNA of present-day people in Eurasia1. Here we analyse DNA from a 37,000–42,000-year-old2 modern human from Peştera cu Oase, Romania. Although the specimen contains small amounts of human DNA, we use an enrichment strategy to isolate sites that are informative about its relationship to Neanderthals and present-day humans. We find that on the order of 6–9% of the genome of the Oase individual is derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back. However, the Oase individual does not share more alleles with later Europeans than with East Asians, suggesting that the Oase population did not contribute substantially to later humans in Europe.

Full study on a recent finding in Romania.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vao...14558.html

[Alex K]

I remember it being all over the science news in 2010, the interbreeding between HS and Neanderthal. This individual had a particularly high percentage though.

[Minimalist]

HNS ranged from Britain to the Crimea and from the 50th parallel south to the Med.  In the Levant they have been detected in modern Israel.  Yet, in all that vast span it is estimated that at their peak there were but 70,000 HNS.  This begs the question of how large could any of these various groups have been.  In a population of 20-30 how many breeding females could there have been?

It is not terribly surprising that there are evolutionary dead ends.

[abaris]

This individual had a particularly high percentage though.

That's the point of this study.

[Regina]

I guess there's quite a few possible explanations as to why a pre-historic European might have had more Neanderthal ancestry than we have today. I'd guess the best one is that maybe the "aboriginal" modern humans in Europe back then had more Neanderthal ancestry, but it got gradually watered down as successive waves of modern human migration into Europe happened from Asia and Africa. Makes sense.

Either that or some groups of early Europeans had lots of Neanderthal ancestry while others had none, and after they all migrated and bred with eachother it homogenised.

[Anomalocaris]

Or some of the Neanderthal genes Homo sapiens inherited had subtle detrimental effect on the survival of those bearing the genes, so over large number generations these subtlety detrimental Neanderthal genes were gradually eliminated from the gene pool, leaving only Neanderthal genes that were neutral or positive for survival, resulting in descendant populations having fewer Neanderthal genes overall than ancestral populations, without any later admixture with populations that had no Neanderthal genes.

[Cyberman]

Maybe if I were a Neanderthal I might get to have sex with a Homo Sapiens one day.

[Alex K]

Maybe if I were a Neanderthal I might get to have sex with a Homo Sapiens one day.

You might try go to a plastic surgeon and get bulging brows and a slightly fleeting forehead installed. Then get some protein shakes and amphetamines, and you'll look more neanderthal than the old man of la chapelle.

[Cyberman]

Yeah - "installed"...