RE: Progress schmogress (was Re: competition)

["Christopher Lavers" <Chris.Lavers@nottingham.ac.uk>]

>>> "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu> 08/01/01 01:57pm >>>
>Incidentally, almost all paleoanthropologists now regard Neanderthalers as >a
>distinct species _H. neanderthalensis_ rather than a subspecies of modern
>humans.  There are a number of anatomical features found in >Neanderthalers 
>that are not present in us, and vice versa.

Genetic support for the idea that human and Neanderthal were indeed different 
species: results from 379-base-pair strands of hypervariable mitochondrial DNA: 
average difference of individual human from Anderson sequence (the reference) = 
8 substitutions. Human/chimp = 55. Human/Neanderthal = 26. (Estimated 
human/Neanderthal split = 550,000-690,000 years ago). Of all living humans 
whose mitochondria have been sequenced, none has anything like a Neanderthal in 
their maternal lineage - no sign of gene flow at all.

Krings, M. et al. (1997). Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern 
humans. *Cell*, 90, 19-30. See also *Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci.* 96, 5581-5 (1999) 
and *Nature Genetics* 26, 144-6 (2001).