Chinese fossil analysis suggests new hominid species Details on what could be a new species of human based in East Asia have been discovered by archeologists, and could alter our understanding of the spread of humanity across the planet. Scientists have published an open paper detailing the analysis of the remains of three individuals discovered at the Maludong (or Red Deer Cave …
Besides us, we have Neanderthals, Floresiensis, Denisovans and now these guys. How many more "failed competitors" were there up until recent times? How many more are waiting to be found? And how much interbreeding was there (we already know about HSS interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans)?
Could the Americas have been populated *initially* by some other species, only to be displaced by a later wave of Homo Sapiens?
Everyone wants a new species to keep the grant-money coming.
I reckon that if we dug up an English longbowman, scientists would take one look at the deformities and announce a new species. Thin data needs to be treated *very* cautiously.
I have to wonder whether the idea of the 'deformed' skeletons of longbow men is a bit of a myth. it's repeated a lot, but almost never with any sources, apart from a hazy memory of one skeleton from the Mary Rose, and one study of skeletons from Towton, which so far as i can see simply says the bones of one arm were thicker, which is a 'deformation', but not the quasimodo like image the word tends to conjure up.
Does it annoy anyone else that they keep making such a big thing about this stuff ?
1. if 'we'/Neanderthal/hobbits/deer people interbred then we are not really a species are we (at least not by Dicky Dawkins main criteria).
2. If above is accepted, then we are amalgam of all the different types - just like different types of cows.
There have been a lot of controversy over whether Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals could (and did) interbreed or not. The opinions range from "not possible" over "sterile offspring (like mules)" to "Some European human characteristics are inherited from interbreeding with Neanderthals".
Which is true I can't say. I'm inclined towards the "sterile offspring" theory, since AFAIK genetic analysis of Sapiens and Neanderthal DNA have not shown any difference in European, African and Asian DNA that could be explained by genetic material inherited from Neanderthals.
But it is equally obvious that speciation is a gradual process, so there will in the past have been differently-looking hominids that could interbreed so hybrids appeared. It is only when groups have been isoated long enough that interbreeding stops being possible. There are theories that state that early Sapiens at some point got nearly extinct, which reduced the gene pool sufficiently to prevent viable interbreeding with other hominids and that all present humans are descendants of this small group (which may have numbered only a few hundred individuals).
How this affects the possibility of the skeletons in question being a separate species or not, I can't say.
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3 samples do not make a real theory. imagine a bit of interbreeding now with 2 people with no chins (lots of regular humans are chinless wonders) - they would produce chinless wonders... but a new species they are not. how much variation is there in current human skeletons? loads... What about deformities? maybe they were all brothers & sisters?
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