A New Species? Scientists Discover a Distant Human Relative

Creationism at work.

Agonaces of Susa said:

Creationism at work.

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Nope. Try again.

This is quite awesome.

Here's the paper and the corresponding news article in Nature.

I wonder if it'll ever be possible to extract quality DNA from earlier hominins. It would be so cool to see what DNA has to say about Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, all the australopiths...

Probably a wild dream, but who knows, maybe it's possible.

I'm wondering, though, how much the age difference matters when you do phylogenetic analysis. In such cases, you are comparing samples that had different amounts of time to evolve since their last common ancestor.

Oh well, I'm sure the people who do these analyses thought about that. It probably doesn't matter much when the difference is 30-40 ky compared to a million years of divergence.

Fascinating discovery! The best part is that it contains DNA, so they can sequence it! Therefore creationists can't simply dismiss it as a paleontology blunder, and compare it to Nebraska man... well, actually they can, and they no doubt will. But when they do, we'll have a full sequence, which no doubt will be analyzed madly.

Peter

Someone's pet yeti?

A new piece of the family tree. So, out of Africa happened a lot. It's actually quite amazing that of all the human species that were cohabitating not so long ago that we are the only one left.

This is cool. This means, what, up to four extant species of human at once in the comparatively recent past? Sapiens, Neanderthal, this new one, and the Southeast Asian one?

Compared to, what, only two species of gorilla and I think only 1 or 2 species of chimpanzee?

Metherion

It's actually quite amazing that of all the human species that were cohabitating not so long ago that we are the only one left.

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That's an interesting point. I have a theory that our history may have been a pretty bloody one. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't eat at least some of the other human branches on the family tree; although I seem to remember hearing that there is evidence we lived alongside Neanderthals fairly peaceably. I'm not entirely sure how they know that, especially as it flies in the face of almost every example in history of human populations living next to each other and not trying to kill each other, but, there we are.

So my theory is that if competition for resources didn't kill off competing hominids, then we took matters into our own hands and butchered them ourselves.

Tomatoman said:

I seem to remember hearing that there is evidence we lived alongside Neanderthals fairly peaceably.

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Well, there's evidence that they lived together (or at least, in the same regions at the same time). Whether they lived peacably or not... the debate rages on.

I'm not entirely sure how they know that, especially as it flies in the face of almost every example in history of human populations living next to each other and not trying to kill each other, but, there we are.

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I agree, we probably survived because we were able to exterminate our competition. This may have been genocidal (humanity's history of war and tribalism supports this; even the modern behavior of forming gangs and cliques support this idea), or it may have been due to simply out-competing them and leaving them without enough food. Or perhaps even both.

metherion said:

This is cool. This means, what, up to four extant species of human at once in the comparatively recent past? Sapiens, Neanderthal, this new one, and the Southeast Asian one?

Compared to, what, only two species of gorilla and I think only 1 or 2 species of chimpanzee?

Metherion

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Two species of gorilla now. I wouldn't be surprised if more had existed in the past and have been (relatively) swiftly outcompeted, just like our species has outcompeted the other human species.

Naraoia said:

I wonder if it'll ever be possible to extract quality DNA from earlier hominins. It would be so cool to see what DNA has to say about Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, all the australopiths...

Probably a wild dream, but who knows, maybe it's possible.

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Probably not, since DNA seems to degrade too much to be usable for such old samples.

[By the way, there's a conference call on the whole genome analysis of this X hominin going on in the background in my office at the moment. The guy who shares my office is heavily involved in the Neandertal/X Woman analysis.]