Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
See:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...may-indicate-species-older-thought-180972184/
"[FONT="]The Teeth of Early Neanderthals May Indicate the Species’ Lineage Is Older Than Thought"
[/FONT][FONT="]"In a cave called the ‘pit of bones,’ up in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain, a collection of 430,000-year-old teeth are curiously smaller than might be expected for the skulls they were found with. The anomaly has one scientist suggesting that the lineages of modern humans and Neanderthals split some 800,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than genetic studies have estimated.
Aida Gómez-Robles, an anthropologist at University College London, studies how ancient hominin species’ teeth evolved over the ages. She believes that because the ancient teeth look too modern for their era, they must have evolved unusually quickly or, as she finds more likely, had more time to evolve than has been generally believed. The new research was published today in Science Advances."
"Neanderthals and Homo sapiens share a common ancestor, but exactly who that species was, and when the later lineages diverged from it, is a difficult mystery to untangle. But there are clues, and the new tooth study is far from the first evidence to emerge even from Sima de los Huesos, the fossil-rich cave site in Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains. "
"[/FONT][FONT="]Genetics has helped us peer into the past and sketch out the ancient branches of the hominin family tree. [/FONT]A 2016 study of 430-000-year-old Neanderthal remains from[FONT="] the Sima de los Huesos site estimates the time of the Neanderthal split from the [/FONT]Homo sapiens [FONT="]lineage at 550,000 to 765,000 years ago. Other genetic studies similarly suggest divergence times that are less than 800,000 years ago.[/FONT][FONT="]Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, says that while Gómez-Robles raises some plausible ideas, he’s far from convinced that rates of dental evolution are as standard or predictable as the paper suggests. “She’s bitten off an interesting topic here, but I just don’t see the argument that dental rates of evolution are absolutely known to the point where we can then say that for certain the Neanderthal-modern human divergence must have been earlier than 800,000 years ago,” Potts says. “A variety of molecular genetic studies suggest it’s more recent.”[/FONT]
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[/FONT]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...may-indicate-species-older-thought-180972184/
"[FONT="]The Teeth of Early Neanderthals May Indicate the Species’ Lineage Is Older Than Thought"
[/FONT][FONT="]"In a cave called the ‘pit of bones,’ up in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain, a collection of 430,000-year-old teeth are curiously smaller than might be expected for the skulls they were found with. The anomaly has one scientist suggesting that the lineages of modern humans and Neanderthals split some 800,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than genetic studies have estimated.
Aida Gómez-Robles, an anthropologist at University College London, studies how ancient hominin species’ teeth evolved over the ages. She believes that because the ancient teeth look too modern for their era, they must have evolved unusually quickly or, as she finds more likely, had more time to evolve than has been generally believed. The new research was published today in Science Advances."
"Neanderthals and Homo sapiens share a common ancestor, but exactly who that species was, and when the later lineages diverged from it, is a difficult mystery to untangle. But there are clues, and the new tooth study is far from the first evidence to emerge even from Sima de los Huesos, the fossil-rich cave site in Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains. "
"[/FONT][FONT="]Genetics has helped us peer into the past and sketch out the ancient branches of the hominin family tree. [/FONT]A 2016 study of 430-000-year-old Neanderthal remains from[FONT="] the Sima de los Huesos site estimates the time of the Neanderthal split from the [/FONT]Homo sapiens [FONT="]lineage at 550,000 to 765,000 years ago. Other genetic studies similarly suggest divergence times that are less than 800,000 years ago.[/FONT][FONT="]Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, says that while Gómez-Robles raises some plausible ideas, he’s far from convinced that rates of dental evolution are as standard or predictable as the paper suggests. “She’s bitten off an interesting topic here, but I just don’t see the argument that dental rates of evolution are absolutely known to the point where we can then say that for certain the Neanderthal-modern human divergence must have been earlier than 800,000 years ago,” Potts says. “A variety of molecular genetic studies suggest it’s more recent.”[/FONT]
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