New type of ancient human discovered in Israel
bbc.com
bbc.com
Here's a great TED Talk about dinosaur species being mistakenly identified because 'scientists have egos': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQa11RMCeSI&t=102s (well worth a watch, it's a great story)
Looking at a time when multiple hominid groups lived in relative isolation over large spans of time, admittedly without expert knowledge, it seems to make sense to me that there would be quite a bit of variation of "species" (though I also suspect the various species are more alike than most breeds of dogs...)
You should see what insects do. It just isn't possible, using fossil records alone, to identify whether two insects belong to the same or different species.
totally amazing that insects basically rearrange themselves on near celular level though at certain points in their lifespan
What I find more amazing is that, in the popular culture, this is usually presented as something unusual that butterflies do. When in reality all insects do it and the metamorphosis of butterflies is notable only for its extreme typicality.
And that was only in 40 years -- admittedly with intentional breeding, but it's conceivable that changes in diet, parasites, tumultuous periods of history, seismic changes, or even war/pillaging/violence could rapidly change the makeup of an entire continent within just a few decades. In fact, we've seen that in very recent history.
I have no knowledge of anthropology but it just seems a bit crazy to me that from few bits of bone we can declare we found a new species.
There are very few generic outliers. They do exist, but at the same time, the chance that the next person you meet will be <1.20m or >2.40m tall is insignificant.
The argument is stronger for the past, because generic outliers tend to have worse health than the average and have worse chances of reaching adulthood, so if you find a part of the skeleton of a single adult, the chance that it's someone who's half/twice as tall as the rest of the population is even smaller than for today.
https://www.mindprod.com/image/math/livinghistogram.jpg shows an entire class. They could have had a generic outlier among the pupils, but most people are near the average, see?
I'm dubious that they have that evidence, especially given their further unsubstantiated claims that they're ancestors of the neanderthals. The linked article discussed 0 evidence for why it's a new species. Presumably there's a published paper that goes into details.
To some degree if a scientific discovery is news, it isn't firmly established, because if the entire field hasn't heard about it, it hasn't been properly vetted.
You're "dubious that they have that evidence". What evidence is required, in your opinion, then?
Speaking as a layman, my first guess at a suitable threshold would be: finding a large-enough, different-enough part of a skeleton/whatever that in the past such parts have seldom turned out to be an existing species.
(edit: and you should not be surprised at the number of "new species" which are just juveniles of a known species.)
And how where their teeth at the time?
Humans come in various shapes and sizes. In fact, given that the remains were found in a sinkhole, small stature might have something to do with their inability to escape.
For example, "little people" have adult teeth:
Also, there are several types of common, modern humans that then to have very short statures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples
On the other end of the scale,
https://stillunfold.com/people/10-real-life-giants-known-for...
I'd love that ELI5.
If it's just morphology and traits, given the amazing variety of people alive today, I wonder how many different species future archaeologists would identify.
I've seen the array of skulls at the natural history museum. Clear progression, sure. But when does one thing become another thing.
I know, I know, dividing lines are arbitrary. But I'd still like the ELI5 for how a professional knows homo sapiens vs neanderthal. Maybe a visual diff tool.
It's actually surprising how much information a single tooth or piece of bone can actually give you.
Sequence DNA, find a population with small, but consistent mutations, declare new species, declare new species endangered because population is so small, declare a 100 mile radius refuge around population, repeat.
Not in that business, but could it be simply that a new way of measuring taxonomy is needed? From the outside, it appears that the whole business inherits from a Victorian need for orderly tree structures.
Then we can collapse nodes to obtain species that evolved from one another or more realistic arrangements, respecting some constraints (for example, if A is an ancestor of B and B is an ancestor of C, putting A and C in the same species should imply that B belongs to that species too).
There's an older paper by Holliday on this subject that you might find interesting: https://doi.org/10.1086/377663
On the other hand the Africa / Asia land bridge would logically always have been an "interesting" area as the conduit for any population migrations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57432104
PR departments competing, I find it difficult to believe two important different ancestors published on the same day for any other reason?
Are there any geologists or experts who can explain the difference between these caves in Israel and the ones in Europe and North America? They all seem incredibly different.
I wonder if there was a time when there was an easier land route leading to more northern climates (the theory that at some point in the nearish past the mediterranean was dry makes me wonder what kind of flooded fossils lie at the bottom too)
Sparks Notes:
- It is thought that the Toba Super-Volcano eruption is linked to a severe drop in human populations due to it's influence on global climate
- Some genetic evidence supports today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago
- This hypothesis isn't yet solid, and there is some evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless it's discussion is an important topic in the history of mankind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#:~:tex....
This means that diversity was not tremendously impacted.
Taking one person from every village around the world preserves the majority of all diversity, whereas taking 10000 people from a single population, destroys diversity.
Of course, these are model populations based on idealized breeding right- I believe the way these estimates work is that they represent the idealized minimum bound for a real population that was likely magnitudes greater but had lots of deaths.
And as others have pointed out I believe there were several bottle neck events in the 'recent' past
"Cann, Stoneking and Wilson did not use the term "Mitochondrial Eve" or even the name "Eve" in their original paper; it appears to originate with a 1987 article in Science by Roger Lewin, headlined "The Unmasking of Mitochondrial Eve."[19] The biblical connotation was very clear from the start. The accompanying research news in Nature had the title "Out of the garden of Eden."[20] Wilson himself preferred the term "Lucky Mother"[21] and thought the use of the name Eve "regrettable"
It is unfortunate, that biblical myths still try to influence research. But it is popular.