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Worlds oldest DNA in a 400,000 y/o thigh bone


seeder

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World's oldest DNA is recovered from a 400,000-year-old thigh bone - and provides a new jigsaw piece in the history of evolution

* Scientist reconstructed the mitochondrial genome from two grams of bone

* They found early humans shared a common ancestor with the Denisovans

* This was suprising as early humans were thought to share a common ancestor with Neanderthals due to similar skeletal features

The world's oldest human DNA has been recovered from the thigh bone of an ancestor that walked the Earth 400,000 years ago.

It belonged to a hominin, or early human, known as Homo heidelbergensis and provides a new vital piece of the jigsaw in the story of evolution.

Using a technique for retrieving and sequencing highly degraded ancient DNA, scientists were able to reconstruct the almost complete mitochondrial (mt) genome from just two grams of bone powder.

Read more:

http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz2mb8tJjfm

another version

Oldest DNA Leads To Evolution Questions. A 400,000-year-old thigh bone found in Spain surprises scientists with its genetic links, which they cannot yet explain.

http://news.sky.com/story/1177886/oldest-dna-leads-to-evolution-questions

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Edited by seeder
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Don't all forms of life share a common ancestor? Unless more than one kind of life formed at the start of it all...

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This is about the immediate predecessors of humans. It seems there were several "types" (maybe separate species but if they shared DNA then I would guess more like races) in Eurasia during the last million or so years.

It seems our species evolved in Africa during this period and entered Eurasia maybe around 200 to 400 thousand years ago, and may have interbred some, but plainly not much, with Homo species already there.

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This is about the immediate predecessors of humans. It seems there were several "types" (maybe separate species but if they shared DNA then I would guess more like races) in Eurasia during the last million or so years.

It seems our species evolved in Africa during this period and entered Eurasia maybe around 200 to 400 thousand years ago, and may have interbred some, but plainly not much, with Homo species already there.

Race has no meaning within the genus Homo and the "types" mentioned would be along the species level.

Our species, meaning Homo sapiens sapiens, are only evidenced as having entered southern Arabia a little more than 106,000 BP as evidenced by the Nubian Complex sites in Yemen. With a later and more wide ranging migration between 50,000 - 70,000 BP and evidence of having entered Europe only as recently as c.45,000 BP.

cormac

Edited by cormac mac airt
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I don't know that it's a good idea to be so dogmatic contradicting others in an area where the evidence is so sparse and where the other person was careful to put things in hypothetical phrases. It tends to sour the milk, although I hope that was not your intent.

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whoops, sorry everyone this would appear to be a duplicate posting, other thread here

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=258825

I guess mods will merge.

Now wouldn't it be great if people like zoser left the UFO forums for a while and catch up on things like this? He is forever saying "the missing link blah blah..therefore it was aliens blah blah blah" yet you cant expect to discover the truth of the human species on ET forums :lol:

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I don't know that it's a good idea to be so dogmatic contradicting others in an area where the evidence is so sparse and where the other person was careful to put things in hypothetical phrases. It tends to sour the milk, although I hope that was not your intent.

My intent was solely to clarify areas where you appeared not to understand the difference between Genus and Species. "Race" has no scientific meaning and is therefore irrelevant in the context of the human phylum (i.e. Homo = Genus; sapiens (1st usage) = species; sapiens (2nd usage) = subspecies). There was nothing in Post #3 that I saw as hypothetical. It came across as more of an implication of evidence that doesn't actually exist.

cormac

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