Intriguing, and certainly possible, but I don't exactly follow why inerbreeding would only reduce tthe apparent age of the proto-chimp-derived X chromosome and not all of the somatic chromosomes passing back and forth as well. Need to find the actual research paper to get a better idea of what is really going on.

 

I agree completely with the London researcher quoted in the news story about species starting out with "fuzzy" boundaries and becoming "real" (reproductively and then genetically isolated from related lines) ovver time. "We probably had a bit of a messy origin" sums it up nicely.

 

Human Ancestors May Have Interbred With Chimpanzees

 

By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01

 

When the ancestors of human beings and the ancestors of chimpanzees parted ways 6.3 million years ago, it was probably a very long goodbye. Some of their descendants may even have gone back for a final tryst.

 

That is the conclusion a group of scientists has reached, using a comparison of the genes of humans and their closest animal relatives to sketch a picture of human origins far more detailed than what fossil bones have revealed. new theory, chimps and humans shared a common apelike ancestor much more recently than was thought. Furthermore, when the two emerging species split from each other, it was not a clean break. Some members of the two groups seem to have interbred about 1.2 million years after they first diverged -- before going their separate ways for good.

 

. . .

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6051702158.html

Human Ancestors May Have Interbred With Chimpanzees :headshake

 

Then again.....if the lighting was bad and if there was alcohol back then..........

 

Human Ancestors May Have Interbred With Chimpanzees :headshake

 

Then again.....if the lighting was bad and if there was alcohol back then..........

 

 

Just after thier divergence from a common line, proto-humans and proto-chimps would not have looked all that different, and there likely would have been ssery similar courtship cues. In time, divergent behavior would start to minimize the number of incorrect pairings - basically the alcohol and bad lighting instances you suggest.

 

The most intriguing assertion of the study is that we are more likely the descendants of the hybrid line and not of the pure protohuman line. Like I said, I need to see the primary literature before I have a real opinion on it.

Edited May 18, 200619 yr by FlaSoxxJim

Ok, this sort of thing drives me absolutely nuts.

 

"I think the most interesting thing [is] this idea that long, extended gene flow seems to have occurred and that this might be a creative mode of evolution," said David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. He is one of the authors of the study, which appears in today's issue of the journal Nature.

I'm sitting at the Table of Contents for Nature, the volume for May 18th, 2006. There's no paper by that author, and as far as I can tell, no article on this subject.

Somewhere, Juggernaut just exploded

Ok, this sort of thing drives me absolutely nuts.

I'm sitting at the Table of Contents for Nature, the volume for May 18th, 2006. There's no paper by that author, and as far as I can tell, no article on this subject.

 

Bad citation info drives me crazy as well. It's actually in the May 17th (yesterday) Advance Online Publication.

 

Here's a link to the full text:

 

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/...ature04789.html

 

Now my dilemma: do I stay here and read the paper, or do I get my ass out the door and head across the state to get to the Trop in time to watch some White Sox BP??

 

Tough choice I know

 

Now my dilemma: do I stay here and read the paper, or do I get my ass out the door and head across the state to get to the Trop in time to watch some White Sox BP??

Dude, it's a Nature paper. It's not like it's going to take a lot of time. Read it in the concession line.

 

Oh wait, you're in Tampa, sorry forgot, no lines. Read it between innings.