:salam2:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/110727_tch_neanderthals.photoblog500.jpg
One of the most titillating tales in the study of human origins — focusing on whether Neanderthals interbred with modern humans — has just gotten more tangled.
Over the past couple of years, studies of Neanderthal DNA samples painstakingly extracted from ancient bones have suggested that contemporary non-Africans can trace up to 4 percent of their genetic code to our long-extinct Neanderthal cousins. The genomes of modern-day Africans, in contrast, have virtually nothing in common with the Neanderthals. Researchers assumed that the genetic contribution for the non-Africans was passed down through cross-species sex during the time that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived in close proximity in Europe, tens of thousands of years ago.
However, there’s another possibility: Maybe that common genetic code was passed down from the common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa. Today, researchers at the University of Cambridge reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that such a scenario provides a better fit for the genetic data. They say there’s no need to assume that anatomically modern humans did the Neanderthal nasty, a process known more scientifically as hybridization.
“Our work shows clearly that the patterns currently seen in the Neanderthal genome are not exceptional, and are in line with our expectations of what we would see without hybridization,” the lead researcher, Andrea Manica, said in a Cambridge news release. “So, if any hybridization happened — it’s difficult to conclusively prove it never happened — then it would have been minimal and much less than what people are claiming now.”
Wikipedia nad google don’t open, when I raise a query on GS