Possible New Species of Human Discovered

Sunstone · #1 03-25-2010, 03:59 PM

The remains seem to be of an extinct lineage of humans that lived in Asia from one million to (possibly) about 30,000 years ago. It's possible the remains are of a distinct species.

Nepenthe · #2 03-25-2010, 10:40 PM

It's a really cool find whether it turns out to be a separate species or not. As usual Zimmer has an awesome write up on the Nature paper and anthropologist John Hawks has an interesting perspective as well. Svante Paabo is a molecular paleontological rockstar; he's been at the forefront of designing techniques to isolate ancient DNA. His recent project to sequence the complete neanderthal genome is the stuff of legend and has resulted in a "rough draft" already. In the Nature article Paabo does shy away from actually calling the "X-Woman's" pinky itself evidence of a new species, but he hasn't been so shy in saying so in public announcements. It's a pretty bold claim to introduce a new species here based on the mt sequence alone, but I can only guess Paabo and his colleagues know more than has been released so far and, as usual, time will tell, particularly after Paabo and crew finish the sequencing the nuclear DNA. If that's as unusual as the mt evidence, well, then this will prove even more interesting.

kai · #3 03-25-2010, 11:17 PM

Fascinating subject

Caladan · #4 03-26-2010, 05:57 AM

Read about it in Science Daily, I'll be waiting for more in depth releases. mt sequence can give us valuable data when compared to that of other species, and that is what they did with the X-Woman, comparing the mt sequence to that of modern humans and neanderthals, but like Nepenthe said, this find will be tackled from many angles by perhistorians, and we'll wise up.

sandandfoam · #5 03-30-2010, 06:02 AM

"....The initial suspicion that the new species were thought to be Irish government ministers have now been discounted....."

the rest here:-

| The Post