Neanderthals interbred with non African populations

[Violet]

They don't. They stuff them and mount them.


And, let's be honest here. Neither of us wants to delve too deeply into how the "mounting" is done.

I've seen them mounted after being stuffed... and you are certainly not far off. Don't worry, most would also eat the damn bear. And like it..

Bear cock. Yum?

[Justtristo]

I've read a YEC book too, mindnumbingly stupid. Can you give me some examples of interbreeding, I'm blanking right now.

A contemporary example of interbreeding happening in the wild is between Polar and Brown Bears, crosses between Bison and Domestic Cattle, marine iguanas and land iguanas.

[CharlieMilles]

I am now a Neanderthal Supremacist.

[Anomalocaris]

Able to reproduce means morn than could reproduce only under rare and unusually circumstances even if placed together. If require enough behavioral compatibility to do so with some frequency when possible. Behavioral compatibility is part of reproductive compatibility.

And obviously they managed that, Chuck. That's the whole point of the recent genome studies about HNS which have come out. But I don't think Darwin would have cared about anything except the biological ability to reproduce.

Horses and donkeys can breed but the offspring are infertile, generally. Same is true of ligers.... (lions and tigers). Grizzly bear/polar bear hybrids have been found in Alaska...unfortunately the shitheads up there tend to shoot them so who knows if they are "fertile" of not.

I think you are missing the nuances of biological infertility in hybrids between animals of two different, but closely related species. In higher sexually reproducing creatures the sex of the animal is usually (but not always) determined by sex chromosomes. One sex would have 2 identical sex chromosomes, like XX in human females, and the other would have two different sex chromosomes, like XY in human males. In all mammals, it is the male that has the XY sex chromosome, while the female has the XX chromosome. In birds and some reptiles, the case is reversed. It has been known since 1820s that result of hybridization effects offspring of different sex differently. It is now known that the presence of sex chromosomes determines which sex will likely be present and fertile amougst the offsprings of hybridization. The relationship between sex chromosomes and how hybridization effects offspring of different sex is known as Haldaine's rule.

If interbreeding occurs between two animal that are reasonably close, say in the same genus like lions and tigers, but not of the same species, then in many cases (but not all cases) the offsprings will be all be of the sex with 2 identical sex chromosome. The other sex will be reliably absent. In the case of mammals, Haldaine's rule says hybridized offspring in many cases will be all female.

If the particular species involve in hybridizing do produce offsprings of both sexes, then any offsprings with 2 different sex chromosome will quite likely be biologically infertile. But any offspring of the other sex are more often technically fertile, and capable of mating and reproducing. In case of mammals, if hybridzing produce both male and female offsprings, then Haldaine's rule say male hybrids are usually infertile, female hybrids more often are fertile.

When a female hybrid offspring is technically fertile, it often lacks secondary sexual characteristics that would promote successful mating. So in nature, female hybrids often have low rate of reproductive success, although this rate can be raised artificially in zoos. But even when a hybrid female is induced to successfully mate, she is often able to reproduce with only one of the two species to which her parents belong, and not the other.

In the case of ligers, both males and females are possible, but males are always infertile, while females sometimes are fertile. But fertile female ligers seems to be able to reproduce with lion males, not with tiger males.

So you see, there is not such a sharp delineation of fertility even from hybrids of species you would recognize as different, unless you regard tigers and lions, or indeed members within most genus, to all be the same species.

Since the genetic separation between HSS and HNS is much more recent that those between, say lion and tiger, we may expect with some confidence that should HSS and HNS cross breed, a percentage of female hybrids (XX) would be fertile. But we don't know if any male hybrids (XY) would also be fertile. Indeed we don't really even know if any male hybrid offspring of HSS and HNS can actually occur.

Furthermore, If the data about HNS genes in HSS is correct, and the HNS gene we inherited is not on a Y sex chromosome, then that only tells us at most the female hybrid of HSS and HNS could on occasions breed with HSS males. It doesn't say anything about whether such hybrid can also interbreed with HNS males.

So by no means do the discovery of HNS genes in HSS make clear whether the two are of the same species, that is unless the HNS gene in HSS happen to occur on a Y sex chromosome. If the HNS gene we inherited was on the Y sex chromosome which occurs only in males, than the case would be strong for really high level of reproductive compatibility between HNS and HSS. Otherwise it proves nothing other than what we already know, which is HSS and HNS are in the same genus.

Regarding Darwin, I suspect you underestimate him. The outward expression of Haldaine's rule was first noted long before Darwin published his Origin of Species, even if the relationship to sex chromosomes would not be understood until a hundred years later. Being the painstaking methodical guy he was, taking 20 years to analyze all his data and marshaling all his arguments into an orderly troop, it seems unlikely he would have overlooked this fact or missed its significance to the theory of speciation and evolution.

[Minimalist]

Interesting but not relevant to the doctrinaire assertion of the original OOA proponents that there was no interbreeding between HNS and HSS (nor could there have been interbreeding). Personally I approve of the "shades of gray" theory ( as above) as opposed to black and white which so often seems to get people into trouble.

We must assume based on the studies that the offspring of HSS/HNS were fertile....otherwise the line would have died out in a generation.

[Anomalocaris]

The doctrinaire assertion is not necessary to OAA. The lack of HNS genes on the HSS Y sex chromosome suggests the fertile offspring of HNS-HSS pairing were all female, which argues against HNS being the same species as HSS.

[Minimalist]

That may have be true but it did not stop them from making it. That part of their "theory" has been shown to be wrong. Now they can go back to the drawing board and try to salvage the rest of it.

Should be interesting to see what emerges.