4w ago

We’ve had a Denisovan skull since the 1930s—only nobody knew

Until now, we only had fragments of these cousins. Now we have face. Studying our evolutionary development and our sister-species is one of my favorite aspects of archeology. We’re constantly developing new information.

Side note: look up the initial presentation of Homo naledi. The leading archeologist did a phenomenal talk a couple of years ago (I think in December). It was really an exciting presentation. But I’m also pretty nerdy.

25 comments

is big if true, so far we knew they existed due to DNA tests on small fragments of bones, quite a small footprint for a whole subspecies
Imagine being so ugly future anthropologists misclassify you?
I understand why we give them different names...
But they're not really different, it's just human variation. Like a German shepherd and a beagle, they're still both dogs and can still reproduce, which is why they're not separate species.
So all those other hominids whose DNA we still carry...
They're still the same species as us. Our branch of the family tree just has the "uncanny valley" hatred, so anyone that doesn't look like who we grew up around became "them". So we pruned the shit out of our family tree till it's basically a straight line.
There's a lot of shit racists came up with 200 years ago that we just haven't thrown out yet, but it's going to take a while before we get the widespread acceptance that all those "distant relatives" really weren't that different than us.
All the shit that was supposed to make us "special" was present so far back on the family tree that it's almost statistically impossible for only our branch to keep those traits and everyone else to have lost them.
We're still in the moving goalposts phase of why we were special snowflakes, but another couple decades and we might finally widely acknowledge the truth
- I mean, disagree. The DNA pretty conclusively proves the other homonids were not us, just a distant part of us. Same genus, different species.
  If they were alive today they'd be extremely distinct, but we'd still be able to interbreed, think like wolves vs dogs.
  All races of homo sapien came from a species out of Africa at the same time. Some stayed, others wandered and intermingled with other homonids mixing our DNAs.
  
  I think it is more like tigers and lions. Neanderthal human hybrids were likely less fertile, particularly any hybrid with a Neanderthal y chromosome. This has gone extinct.
  
  Same genus, different species.
  Species can't interbreed...
  That's like, the main thing for speciation
  think like wolves vs dogs.
  You mean like one species? You do know wolves and dogs are still the same species if they can produce fertile offspring, right?
  Like, there's a lot of misunderstanding to unwrap here, but I'm thinking you think it's a hard-line and a German Shepherd and a Chihuahua are the same distance from a Gray wolf...
  That's not real life, that's the dumb downed version we teach 12 year olds in science class.
  All races of homo sapien came from a species out of Africa at the same time
  Wildly untrue, is that a typo or did you really mean that?
  You really should read up on what actually makes a species a separate species, and stop just memorizing the list some racist made centuries ago...
  Like, those same people said Africans were a separate species, do you believe that too?
  If not, you really should take the time to learn what you're talking about, instead of just repeating centuries old racist takes.
  Organisms are grouped into species partly according to their morphological, or external, similarities, but more important in classifying sexually reproducing organisms is the organisms’ ability to successfully interbreed. Individuals of a single species can mate and produce viable offspring with one another but almost never with members of other species. Separate species have been known to produce hybrid offspring (for example, the horse and the donkey producing the mule), but, because the offspring are almost always inviable or sterile, the interbreeding is not considered successful.
  https://www.britannica.com/science/species-taxon
- It's not just breeding. Are the offspring sterile? A male horse and a female donkey will get you a hinny, but they're sterile. Male donkey and female horse makes a mule, which are almost always sterile with a few exceptions.
- The "us and them" mentality that is a naturally human thought pattern has been made a fascinatingly black/white thought pattern in USA through all of their history, giving the need for a separate filter for most people when discovery of new "human species" is covered by US scientists or when reported by their news outlets, as the people and their news outlets are more superficial. As a European example of a difference, the most stereotypically Norwegian I know is a third generation Iraqi, but still being a 100% Norwegian.

25 comments