bee, on 21 November 2010 - 03:33 PM, said:
But the fact remains that the male has one x and one y chromosone in his sex chromosones.
So could the x and y (in the male) both be retreived from the starchild skull.
Ie. the male passes on a
pair of chromosones of XY...not just Y...
Not making the Starchild Skull conclusively 100% human. And a question still remain over the ID of the mother...?
Not explaining myself very well and going round in circles now...so I'll shut up...

Um...
No.
To go a little more in depth, they looked for mitochondrial DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother, and passed on through the X Chromosome.
The Y chromosome is passed on through the male, though no DNA was able to be recovered from it, it was to degraded.
So, we have a human skull that shows human DNA, with inherited chromosomes from two humans.
Edited by ShadowSot, 21 November 2010 - 03:59 PM.
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
-Terry Pratchett