Possible New Human Species Discovered In China

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Possible New Human Species Discovered In China

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 14, 2012 @10:33AM from the family-tree-gets-another-branch dept.

BayaWeaver writes "These are exciting times in anthropology. Recent analysis of fossils first discovered in China in 1979 indicate that a human-like species may have co-existed with modern humans as late as 11,500 years ago. This presumably new species has been nicknamed Red Deer Cave people because of their apparent taste for the extinct giant red deer. Other species recently discovered include: the 'hobbits' on the Indonesian island of Flores which are also thought to have been around until 12,000 years ago and the Denisovans discovered in 2010 that co-existed with modern humans in Siberia about 30,000 years ago."

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Fascinating! by SultanCemil · 2012-03-14 10:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

I, for one, think this is absolutely fascinating! The thought that, as recently as 10k years ago, there were other species of human is amazing - that's not far off of written history!

I wonder if we could think about cloning these people - is the DNA "fresh" enough?

--
Cemil.
1. Re:Fascinating! by cpu6502 · 2012-03-14 10:48 · Score: 2
  
  Why does written history only go back 10,000 years? Our ice age ancestors were smart enough to write - did the literature get lost over time? (Like greek and roman music was lost.)
  
  --
  My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
2. Re:Fascinating! by Sponge+Bath · 2012-03-14 10:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  ...as recently as 10k years ago
  4000 years before God created Earth? You can't fool me with your elitist education.
3. Re:Fascinating! by Spy+Handler · 2012-03-14 10:52 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  written history only goes back to about 5000 years, I think ancient Sumerians (Iraqis) writing cuneiform on clay tablets.
  To paraphrase a nerd, if the cro-magnons who left cave paintings 30,000 years ago in France could've written something, they would've written something.
4. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 10:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Hunter-gatherer groups do not have the population size, nor could they sustain the population size necessary to create sufficient specialization for something like scribes or a literate class. Writing had to wait until you had high enough populations and an economic system that could free some group from basic activities like food collection. In other words, you need an urban culture, and even with an urban culture it took a considerable length of time to develop writing. It wasn't an issue of intelligence, it was all down to economics.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
5. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:01 · Score: 0
  
  Religion. The priests burned the written word for being the tool of the devil. :P
6. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:01 · Score: 0
  
  Forget the humans -- we already have enough of them -- I want some of that tasty, tasty red deer meat.
7. Re:Fascinating! by DigiShaman · 2012-03-14 11:03 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Cloning? To what end? Why did they die out in the first place? Ultimately, if they're genetically compatible do you really want to reintroduce their genetic lineage back into the modern human race? Relationships happen. That might be a step backwards for us even if the impact is negligible. Then you start talking about preemptive sterilization.
  I can think of at least half dozen ethical issues so far. It's a can of worms I really don't think we should be opening. Just my 2 cents.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
8. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 11:05 · Score: 2
  
  I am sure the future humans will see us as a bunch of moronic neanderthals that had no culture because we have no long lasting and readable way to record our story.
9. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 11:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And one of necessity....In a tribe, you can gather everyone together and talk to communicate to the population....in a city of thousands, you need something else. Sure town criers work but what bureaucracy needs a record to be maintained beyond what someone recollects a few months later....Who said a bureaucrat was worthless? I am it was a bureaucrat that invented writing in the first place.
10. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 11:12 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Some of the earliest examples of proto-writing in Sumeria appear to be tax records. It is both economies of scale and raw economic need of a large, complex state that drove the need for accurate record keeping. So you're right, it was bureaucrats that likely invented writing.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
11. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:13 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Actually, he's allowed to fool you at least once. A wise man once said "Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
12. Re:Fascinating! by SultanCemil · 2012-03-14 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  You're right, of course. The ethical questions are staggering. I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys". Wouldn't it be cool to see if they were really like us? Haven't you always wondered if Neanderthals would see you as a fellow (albeit weird) "person"?
  
  --
  Cemil.
13. Re:Fascinating! by SultanCemil · 2012-03-14 11:16 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  My apologies. These fossils were clearly placed (rather cleverly) to fool us & test our faith.
  
  --
  Cemil.
14. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:25 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe they were too peaceful for their time. We could stand to have some of that in our genes.
15. Re:Fascinating! by tmosley · 2012-03-14 11:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  30000 years from now, no paper or electronic writing produced by the current generation will exist. Just what little we have carved into stone.
  
  Hard to say what a people were capable of when we know so very, very little about them.
16. Re:Fascinating! by CaptainLugnuts · 2012-03-14 11:28 · Score: 1, Offtopic
  
  I'm not so sure that that was a wise man.
17. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:37 · Score: 0
  
  Your post is idiotic on so many levels, but, oh well.
  > Why did they die out in the first place?
  Ran out of food? Cold winters? Dry summers? Mixed in with Homo Sapiens through breeding?
  > That might be a step backwards for us even if the impact is negligible
  I don't think you understand how evolution works.
  There's no steps forward or backwards, there's only those who survived and those who didn't. De-evolution is not degeneration.
  Do you really think modern humankind will suddenly get supplanted by club-bashing cavemen, like in some bad 1960s sci-fi?
  The only issue is indeed mostly ethical. A lot of questions arise if the cloning can be successful. Can we treat them as test animals? Do we educate them and try integrating them in the society? An so on, and so on.
  I don't understand your worries about crossbreeding, what scenario that will require preemptive sterilization do you have in mind?
18. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:43 · Score: 0
  
  Hunter-gatherer groups do not have the population size, nor could they sustain the population size necessary to create sufficient specialization for something like scribes or a literate class. Writing had to wait until you had high enough populations and an economic system that could free some group from basic activities like food collection. In other words, you need an urban culture, and even with an urban culture it took a considerable length of time to develop writing. It wasn't an issue of intelligence, it was all down to economics.
  Actually, mostly they didn't have the culture. When you're constantly on the move in small bands, you don't want to drag along a whole lot of optional stuff like records.
  The real incentive for record-keeping comes when you have lots of stuff and lots of people in one place. An authoritative repository of objective information can be a big help if you're keeping common warehouses and granaries, paying armies, even attempting to provide some consistency in the administration of justice.
19. Re:Fascinating! by PapayaSF · 2012-03-14 11:43 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  So you're right, it was bureaucrats that likely invented writing.
  And yet it was Phoenician traders and merchants who spread a simple phonemic alphabet around the Mediterranean. Such an alphabet was easy to learn and could be used to transcribe many (all?) spoken languages. So thank business for that advance.
  
  --
  Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
20. Re:Fascinating! by buchner.johannes · 2012-03-14 11:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Cloning? To what end? Why did they die out in the first place? Ultimately, if they're genetically compatible do you really want to reintroduce their genetic lineage back into the modern human race? Relationships happen. That might be a step backwards for us even if the impact is negligible. Then you start talking about preemptive sterilization.
  I can think of at least half dozen ethical issues so far. It's a can of worms I really don't think we should be opening. Just my 2 cents.
  What kind of speciest talk is that? There is no direction and no step forwards or backwards in evolution. It is not directed, only adaptive. A concept of destiny is superstition. I don't mind mammoths being cloned, so what's the line?
  
  You're right, of course. The ethical questions are staggering. I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys". Wouldn't it be cool to see if they were really like us? Haven't you always wondered if Neanderthals would see you as a fellow (albeit weird) "person"?
  Neanderthals wouldn't stand out if you dressed them like us and educated them like our kids. The difference to them is smaller than the variety within homo sampiens. In fact, it hasn't been ruled out that there was mixing between Neanderthals and humans, so we might be all Neanderthals too.
  
  --
  NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
21. Re:Fascinating! by Empiric · 2012-03-14 11:50 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  For those understanding the meaning of "allegory" (or who avoid pretending they don't to repeat a joke that was old for Slashdot 10 years ago), and/or very basic standard Judeo-Christian symbolism I'll just leave this here...
  
  Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted outside of the Father, but being unsound, it will be pulled up by its roots and destroyed."
  
  --Gospel of Thomas, Saying 40
  
  Slashdot's own Mr. Extracanonical, checking in.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
22. Re:Fascinating! by Fluffeh · 2012-03-14 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys".
  The geek side of me thinks that if you truly are a geek, chances are that these folks would give you a wedgie, take your lunch money and play "Why did you smack yourself?" with you.
  
  Haven't you always wondered if Neanderthals would see you as a fellow (albeit weird) "person"?
  Two things come to mind, one serious and one funny. Firstly, if you want to meet a Neanderthal, start following Rugby and try to chat to this french player heh. Secondly, if you do a google search for sub-human, you will find a multitude of articles (especially around WW2) where one bunch thought another bunch was sub-human. You even end up with folks like "Shiro Ishii. We already see enough differences between us and we are the same species to do horrid things to one another. I would hate to see what we would do if we had a scientific basis for actually being different. (I use we here as a general humanity, not individuals.)
  
  --
  Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
23. Re:Fascinating! by jd · 2012-03-14 11:52 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Possibly they did. By many of the paintings, there are symbols etched/painted. These are generally ignored, but it is entirely possible that this was proto-writing and new research is going into studying them.
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/11/cave-painting-symbols-language-evolution
  
  --
  It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
24. Re:Fascinating! by Michael+Woodhams · 2012-03-14 11:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Can we sequence DNA from them? Probably, but not certainly. Ancient DNA is a very tricky business. The preservation of DNA depends a lot on the conditions they've been in since death. Cold and dry is ideal. I know we've sequenced DNA over 30,000 years old, I'm not sure what the record is.
  Ancient human DNA is even trickier. If you're dealing with ancient bison DNA, you can largely avoid contamination problems by keeping the remains away from any modern bison. Keeping your human remains (and DNA samples extracted from them) away from modern humans isn't so easy. In this case, the cat is already out of the bag - the samples have been exposed to modern human DNA for decades. All is not lost, but it makes the job harder, and the outcome more open to doubt.
  Can we clone them? Absolutely not with current technology. We can't clone a cow from a fresh steak, yet alone 10,000 year old bones. It is conceivable that future technology would allow it. I don't think you'll ever get it past an ethics committee though.
  
  --
  Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
25. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 11:56 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The alphabet was certainly the next big innovation, phonetic, easier to learn, could be applied to different languages without all the awkwardness one found in applying Sumerian systems to unrelated languages like Akkadian. In the history of writing it was the next big thing up until the printing press. Still, you have to give the earliest inventors of writing the credit, it still stands in my mind as the greatest single achievement of the human mind, from it springing pretty much everything we see today.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
26. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 12:10 · Score: 2
  
  Thank government for the foundational breakthrough that business could not do....
  Thank government for developing a system that allowed business to even exist!
27. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 12:18 · Score: 0
  
  Die, heretic!
28. Re:Fascinating! by Empiric · 2012-03-14 12:26 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm... I think Saying 13 for you, then.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
29. Re:Fascinating! by quacking+duck · 2012-03-14 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder what the practice in most modern civilizations of burying the dead in caskets will mean for archeologists or alien explorers even 1000 years from now. A quick google suggests even bones disintegrate after a few hundred years, assuming a neutral environment within the casket.
  Considering the odds against fossilization to begin with, it would be ironic if the ritual of burying the dead to preserve their memory, ends up ensuring little record of modern human biology remains for future civilizations to (re-)discover.
30. Re:Fascinating! by khallow · 2012-03-14 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  Why should we "thank" them? None of the current governments had anything to do with it.
31. Re:Fascinating! by Chris+Gunn · 2012-03-14 12:53 · Score: 0
  
  Cloning? To what end? Why did they die out in the first place?.
  Why did the Europeans who began colonising Greenland die out, leaving the natives? Is this proof the natives were/are superior and Europeans may as well leave this world?
32. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 13:12 · Score: 1
  
  did I say anything about current governments?
33. Re:Fascinating! by Chris+Gunn · 2012-03-14 13:12 · Score: 0
  
  The symbols used in the first writing had been used on tokens for trading since 10000 yrs ago or so. The first collection of these symbols, were on bula. I'm going with traders started things off with contracts.
34. Re:Fascinating! by Ambvai · 2012-03-14 13:19 · Score: 1
  
  What about the remains after modern embalming practices? This is not a field I have much knowledge of, but as I understand it, the body pretty much ends up so toxic and full of plasticizers that nothing wants it. Time does rather exhibit a beating on things, even without additional agents though... (It's sort of an even more extreme and long-lasting form of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu)
35. Re:Fascinating! by dryeo · 2012-03-14 13:22 · Score: 2
  
  The hunter gatherers that lived around where I now live worked for 2 weeks out of the year. The ones a bit further away in a crappier situation had to work an hour or 2 a day. And they were all fairly stable.
  Lots of hunter gathers lived in very rich areas where food was laying about for the picking or showed up in a predictable manner.
  The locals also had a few people per settlement whose job (for lack of a better word) was remembering everything. What they lacked was a government and much in the way of business.
  
  --
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
36. Re:Fascinating! by khallow · 2012-03-14 13:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. By using the word, "government" without qualification. Current governments are the only governments around to be thanked.
37. Re:Fascinating! by pipelayerification · 2012-03-14 13:24 · Score: 2
  
  If you think government is the reason business exists you are sadly misinformed. Far more likely is government existing for the sake of business. Government doesn't develop any systems. They simply regulate existing systems at the supposed will of the people.
38. Re:Fascinating! by IndustrialComplex · 2012-03-14 13:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Ultimately, if they're genetically compatible do you really want to reintroduce their genetic lineage back into the modern human race? Relationships happen. That might be a step backwards for us even if the impact is negligible
  Backwards? That assumes that there is a forwards to evolution.
  
  --
  Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
39. Re:Fascinating! by jouassou · 2012-03-14 13:34 · Score: 1
  
  Are you sure that they didn't? Researchers have identified a set of abstract symbols that show up repeatedly in various cave paintings, including the cro-magnon cave paintings in France. It's not inconceivable that this represents a form of early proto-writing.
40. Re:Fascinating! by Black+Parrot · 2012-03-14 13:42 · Score: 1
  
  Gospel of Thomas, Saying 40
  If you want to be Mr. Extracanonical, you should be quoting the Gospel of John-Thomas.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
41. Re:Fascinating! by Sponge+Bath · 2012-03-14 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  Awesome post. I read the surrounding passages for context, searched for comments and pondered it for a while. In the end, I decided it was an ink blot. The only thing it reveals is about the interpreter.
42. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 13:51 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Anyone with even the slimmest knowledge of history would know that governments were responsible for a considerable number of developments, likely even large scale agriculture and civilization themselves.
  Then there are Libertarians, who, instead of history, just repeat idiotic slogans, too stupid and too self-important to even ponder whether the real world resembles them at all.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
43. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 13:54 · Score: 2
  
  The earliest symbols that might be related to writing are the symbols on tortoise shells in China, which were likely used for divination, so if that's the case, it's magicians.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
44. Re:Fascinating! by Empiric · 2012-03-14 14:06 · Score: 0
  
  Well, you know, like Darwin might say, to forewarn us about such upcoming controversies...
  "When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
  Oh wait.
  But yeah, your opinion means fully as much to me as you're straining to posture, mister-soon-to-be-naturally-deselected-random-internet-guy.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
45. Re:Fascinating! by Randle_Revar · 2012-03-14 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  You would probably notice a Neanderthal on the street, at least at second glance if not first. And currently the theory is that they did not have language, though why is less clear. As far as interbreeding, current balance of evidence is that we did.
  
  --
  Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
46. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 14:31 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry to intrude on your American discussion, but I thought cunieform was used a lot to record trade deals, sacks of wheat, that sort of thing, so I think the merchants and the government both needed writing at the same time, the merchants to record their trade and the government to tax it (and to record for all posterity the splendid victories of Ozymandias etc.). None of this would have been possible without the invention of agriculture and static urban populations. There is a reason it happened in the Fertile Crescent.
47. Re:Fascinating! by schlachter · 2012-03-14 14:41 · Score: 1
  
  Once they proved that ancient man was indeed capable of 'death' it was only a matter of time before they found evidence for 'taxation'...as the saying goes...
  
  --
  My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
48. Re:Fascinating! by KermitJunior · 2012-03-14 14:45 · Score: 1
  
  And when encyclopedias stopped being published... a big EMP and "poof" all the recorded evidence is gone....
  
  --
  There is a Universal Life Value Check it
49. Re:Fascinating! by kakaburra · 2012-03-14 15:17 · Score: 1
  
  Why anybody would want to clone an extinct species is beyond me..they became extinct because they were not fit to survive. If you really wanna clone, why not someone like einstein?
50. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 15:18 · Score: 1
  
  your assumption, not my statement.
51. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 15:20 · Score: 1
  
  and it was a government that formed agriculture and urban populations.
52. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  Surely Jesus will come back before then...
53. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  Why does written history only go back 10,000 years? Our ice age ancestors were smart enough to write - did the literature get lost over time? (Like greek and roman music was lost.)
  Their 3.65" non standard floppy disks made it hard to transfer data to the newer non magnetic stone formats.
54. Re:Fascinating! by khallow · 2012-03-14 15:53 · Score: 0
  
  It is fortunate then that I took the effort in my previous post to point out your word in question and preemptively deal with this particular complaint.
55. Re:Fascinating! by DigiShaman · 2012-03-14 16:14 · Score: 1
  
  True. There is no right or wrong way in evolution. It simply is the successful result of change. But let's face it. Bringing the dead back to life isn't isn't something that's ever happened in nature before and then reintroducing back into the breeding population. This would be a first. I suppose the closest it gets are plant seeds in deep hibernation.
  To go along with cloning and breeding into the population is truly walking into uncharted waters for humanity future. There are arguments to be made that we've already disregarded nature on multiple fronts. And actually, I'm sure we've done far more substantial stuff for our race as it is.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
56. Re:Fascinating! by Trogre · 2012-03-14 16:18 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Maybe not, but it will still be under copyright.
  
  --
  "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
57. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 16:40 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah great, to collect taxes from already thriving businesses that, you know, more-or-less created those governments in the first place.
  I guess nothing ever changes.
58. Re:Fascinating! by RavenousBlack · 2012-03-14 16:43 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe we should find some caves and start marking them up with our strange symbols that make up wikipedia articles or something like that.
59. Re:Fascinating! by tolkienfan · 2012-03-14 16:47 · Score: 1
  
  What does that mean?
60. Re:Fascinating! by Internetuser1248 · 2012-03-14 16:58 · Score: 1
  
  I will thank trade for just about every transmission of useful information in the last 10000 years if you will acknowledge the huge distinction between what modern people refer to as business and what actually spread the knowledge. Trade != Business != Corporations. They are three separate things, with some commonalities.
61. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 17:07 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not quite sure you are fortunate because I used a single word. you added in your political garbage to load the word with shit that I had no intention of conveying. You assumed I was talking about a particular set of governments, however, I was talking about government as an institution of society and civilization in general. Thanks for playing.
62. Re:Fascinating! by MightyMartian · 2012-03-14 17:10 · Score: 1
  
  You still don't get the population densities. Not even perhaps the most sedentary hunter-gatherer groups out there like the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, ever had that high a population density. To create a truly large-scale stratified society means you have to make the land push out a lot of f---ing calories, a lot more than even the most plentiful land on its own will manage. It means developing agriculture, which can, per acre of land, push out more calories than even the most prosperous hunter-gatherer groups could hope. There's a reason that literacy only developed independently among urban societies with full agricultural capabilities.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
63. Re:Fascinating! by fadethepolice · 2012-03-14 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  There was no necessity for boolean algebra when george boole created it.
64. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 17:29 · Score: 0
  
  :) Sunday morning - God snuck in some fossils to confuse the "wise guys"
  Please note that this discovery is in CHINA, the land of "genuine imitation plastic leather". These guys have specialized in forgery for the past 4000 years, they just have new tools today. Piltsdown Man, replay?
65. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 17:36 · Score: 0
  
  Why anybody would want to clone an extinct species is beyond me..they became extinct because they were not fit to survive. If you really wanna clone, why not someone like einstein?
  Evolution is more luck than anything else. You might be the strongest, most efficient and smartest species to ever grace any planet in the history of the universe, but if your entire population is anywhere near a natural disaster, like the Yucatan peninsula around 65 million years ago, your biological advantages don't mean shit. Sometimes, nature doesn't give a rat's ass how "fit you are to survive". A tsunami or ice age might wipe out your entire population while a weaker, dumber one might survive just fine on the other side of the world.
  In other words, this species may be better than us in every way. Mother nature may have just dealt them a shitty hand. Don't assume that just because a species is extinct that it is inferior.
66. Re:Fascinating! by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-03-14 17:44 · Score: 2
  
  Writing always comes after agriculture. People who don't farm don't have a need to write.
67. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 20:11 · Score: 0
  
  In fact, it hasn't been ruled out that there was mixing between Neanderthals and humans, so we might be all Neanderthals too.
  DNA sequencing has shown that it is highly likely that not only was their interbreeding, and that in fact almost everybody on earth carries some Neanderthals genetic information. Well, except for one small tribal group in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. Which I find highly amusing... the most "genetically pure" human race is actually a group of black people- suck on that, Hitler.
68. Re:Fascinating! by EvilNTUser · 2012-03-14 20:13 · Score: 1
  
  What kind of speciest talk is that? There is no direction and no step forwards or backwards in evolution. It is not directed, only adaptive. A concept of destiny is superstition. I don't mind mammoths being cloned, so what's the line?
  There is a direction: we are alive and they are not. Unless they were wiped out by a freak event, it means we're genetically "better". And the line would be that preventing mammoths from interbreeding with elephants is not an ethical issue of the same caliber.
  
  --
  My Sig: SEGV
69. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 20:29 · Score: 0
  
  The following generally mean different things:
  "Thank government"
  "Thank governments"
  "Thank the government"
  "Thank the governments"
  
  So go troll elsewhere.
70. Re:Fascinating! by quenda · 2012-03-14 21:38 · Score: 1
  
  30000 years from now, no paper or electronic writing produced by the current generation will exist. Just what little we have carved into stone.
  Or plastic. Future civilizations will wonder at who the great Fisher Price may have been.
71. Re:Fascinating! by boristhespider · 2012-03-14 21:48 · Score: 1
  
  1000 years from now people will find skeletons in caskets. We still find skeletons buried 1500 years back (and more) in a range of contexts, from sealed tombs to straight burial in the earth. Not many, it's true, and often in rubbish condition, but we find them. The future will find skeletons from our modern caskets, too - just perhaps not many, and often in rubbish condition. Still, it'll be more than enough for them to conclude that a coffin is a coffin. Plus, they'll have our headstones to work from. The etching degrades over time but we can still read headstones from Roman times - with effort in many cases, but we can read them.
  What interests me more is what they'll make of gardens of remembrance for those cremated - all those little headstones with nothing buried beneath. They know we're commemorating something, but that something doesn't exist. Maybe they'll do what modern archaelogists do and immediately declare ritual (which would be accurate) and an offering to the Gods that didn't survive in the soil (which wouldn't be).
  They might be even more interested in pet burials, and start wondering whether there were races of intelligent dogs, cats, parrots and goldfish back in the lost days of the concrete civilisation...
72. Re:Fascinating! by boristhespider · 2012-03-14 21:49 · Score: 1
  
  Well, all the recorded evidence back as far as the last printed edition of the encyclopedia.
73. Re:Fascinating! by boristhespider · 2012-03-14 21:54 · Score: 1
  
  I'm pretty sure they won't. We have more than enough lasting memorials that demonstrate the level of technology - and the writing. Even some copies of War and Peace will survive to go along with the stone monuments erected to the glory of despots and the plastic boxes full of silicon and gold with "DELL" stamped on them, and little "Intel Inside!", "Core 2 Duo inside!" and Windows activation code stickers.
74. Re:Fascinating! by jandersen · 2012-03-14 22:18 · Score: 1
  
  To paraphrase a nerd, if the cro-magnons who left cave paintings 30,000 years ago in France could've written something, they would've written something.
  And to paraphrase an article I read only yesterday, those Cro-Magnons left something other than paintings: symbolic marks that look more like "writing" than anything else (sorry, can't find the link now, it may have been on http://anthropology.tamu.edu/news which seems to be down at the moment). To be fair, nobody suggests that this is writing like we understand it, more like "proto-writing", but we are damned close, IMO. These symbols see to have been used over a very large area, and considering that it takes time to develop both advanced painting techniques like the ones in the cave-paintings, and the abstract symbolism, we can be fairly confident that this ahs bee around for a long time before those painting were made. So, writing does seem to have deep roots.
75. Re:Fascinating! by MaskedSlacker · 2012-03-14 22:30 · Score: 2
  
  Given that still extant hunter gatherer societies do not have systems of writing, and known systems of writing all post-date agriculture, and arise only in agricultural societies it is probably safe to generalize and say they couldn't write. Probably because, like the remaining extant hunter gatherers in the Amazon or parts of Africa, they had no use for it. Societies were small, their knowledge base was small, and oral transmission was good enough. Why bother creating and then teaching an entirely new system of communication that offers no benefit in societies of 50 people?
76. Re:Fascinating! by cgaertner · 2012-03-14 23:01 · Score: 2
  
  There is a direction: we are alive and they are not.
  Big deal: I'm alive, while my grandparents are not. In fact, as I'm European I'm probably partly Neanderthal, so the analogy actually works...
  
  Unless they were wiped out by a freak event, it means we're genetically "better".
  It does not. For example, not having to synthesize vitamin C might have been slightly advantageous in the past, but all those sailors having died from scurvy would probably disagree...
77. Re:Fascinating! by ThatsNotPudding · 2012-03-14 23:36 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe not, but it will still be under copyright.
  Bingo. Our Ozymandias will be Steamboat freaking Willie.
78. Re:Fascinating! by ThatsNotPudding · 2012-03-14 23:39 · Score: 1
  
  You've unintentionally summed up the objectives of Right-Wing policy.
79. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 23:54 · Score: 0
  
  No, it just means that we where better adapted to the current environment of the time (or had a large enough range to weather out any local difficulties), better from a human perspective is not ever a consideration, at most it is a side affect.
80. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 00:20 · Score: 0
  
  Agriculture existed in many forms thousands of years before organized goverenment. Government is a result of wanting to tax innovation. Government is also a direct result of people moving from hunter gatherers towards an agricultural society not the cause of it. Read a little history
81. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 01:19 · Score: 0
  
  From memory, some 95% of DNA appears to be junk, with the coding in the remaining 5%. Guess which parts are likely to survive. Clone from it and we will get just more Americans. What's the point of that?
82. Re:Fascinating! by pipelayerification · 2012-03-15 01:40 · Score: 1
  
  Government can't be given credit for organizing activity that took place before they existed. Agriculture predates organized government easily. Governments can be credited with added efficiency (BIG caveat - 'some governments') in certain areas. More often than not history has shown government to be a drag on innovation. When government regulates an industry innovation falls (sometimes not a bad thing: slowing the pace, saving the environment, protecting human rights). There are certainly exceptions to this (Roman Empire, Chinese Dynasties) but government as a whole is not over-credited with creating innovation for a reason. The only thing they can rightfully be credited with is the ability to create a larger scope of innovation and to organize civilization. To give credit for the existence of civilization is ridiculous and ignores history. People that ignore this have an agenda and want to revise history to suit there own political philosophy.
83. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 01:49 · Score: 0
  
  Why does written history only go back 10,000 years? Our ice age ancestors were smart enough to write - did the literature get lost over time? (Like greek and roman music was lost.)
  They probably had Intellectual Property laws before that.
84. Re:Fascinating! by mhajicek · 2012-03-15 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  12,000 years ago there was a rich body of literature concerning every facet of society. Then they invented copyright law.
85. Re:Fascinating! by jzuccaro · 2012-03-15 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  There is already science fiction regarding this subject. Cloning was not the plot device though
86. Re:Fascinating! by fifedrum · 2012-03-15 02:31 · Score: 1
  
  we don't burry people naked, usually, we put shoes, rings, necklaces, ear-rings, even glasses on them. We dress the dead for a formal ceremony, which their burial is, and that stuff will be left in the casket long after the bearer is gone. Future archaeologists will discover this stuff, and see machine made goods, precious metals, gems, plastics and possibly leather and metal components of shoes and clothing. They'll learn quite a bit from that.
  Then they'll smelt down the metals and continue on to the next cemetery.
87. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  Sumerians weren't Iraqis, they occupied present-day Iraq before the rise of the Assyrians, Akkadians and Babylonians. Iraqis descend from Assyrians.
  Though not really considered "canonical" in terms of history, the Sumerian Kings List goes back beyond 10,000 years before it starts getting into the mythical kings, which goes back around much farther.
88. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 03:51 · Score: 0
  
  I, for one, think this is absolutely fascinating! The thought that, as recently as 10k years ago, there were other species of human is amazing - that's not far off of written history!
  I wonder if we could think about cloning these people - is the DNA "fresh" enough?
  If anything, let's clone the hobbits mentioned in the article. Too bad Gandalf's remains have not been found yet :)
89. Re:Fascinating! by tehcyder · 2012-03-15 04:11 · Score: 2
  
  Writing always comes after agriculture. People who don't farm don't have a need to write.
  Well, I can write and I'm not a farmer, so where does that leave your argument, eh? Nowhere, that's where.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
90. Re:Fascinating! by tehcyder · 2012-03-15 04:15 · Score: 1
  
  There is a reason it happened in the Fertile Crescent.
  As the actress said to the bishop.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
91. Re:Fascinating! by tehcyder · 2012-03-15 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  The symbols used in the first writing had been used on tokens for trading since 10000 yrs ago or so. The first collection of these symbols, were on bula. I'm going with traders started things off with contracts.
  You can't have contracts and contact law without a legal system, and a legal system is just another word for (part of) a government.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
92. Re:Fascinating! by tehcyder · 2012-03-15 04:28 · Score: 1
  
  I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys".
  The non-geek side of me was wondering whether they wore fur bikinis like in One Million Years BC.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
93. Re:Fascinating! by Hognoxious · 2012-03-15 04:35 · Score: 1
  
  Government can't be given credit for organizing activity that took place before they existed. Agriculture predates organized government easily.
  Before agriculture people were hunter/gatherers, and they had government - even if it was only the oldest person, or whoever could throw a spear furthest.
  Now that may not fit your definition of organized government, but in that case your definition is somewhat arbitrary.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
94. Re:Fascinating! by boristhespider · 2012-03-15 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  actually that's a very good point. same as our archaeologists learn enormous amounts from grade goods even when the skeletons have gone. either future archaeologists will be idiots and think we like filling boxes with glasses and clothing and ear-rings and little metal rods for legs and fake hips, or they'll realise that there were dead bodies in them and learn surprising amounts about our society and way of life, our physiology and so on.
  and then smelt down the metals and continue on to the next cemetery.
95. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 04:39 · Score: 0
  
  thankfully they didn't have patents back then, or we'd be paying Phoenician-Mercantile Inc. for the use of their Intellectual Property. Corporations are People too!
96. Re:Fascinating! by Hognoxious · 2012-03-15 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  Do you really think modern humankind will suddenly get supplanted by club-bashing cavemen
  Can I come back to you on that one? Sometime around November 7th...
  Serious answer: if conditions change then yes, it could happen.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
97. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  Lol - there you go. Some claim government, others business, others academics (magicians). Everybody's ideology about who is the parasite and who is the host organism is now fully in play.
98. Re:Fascinating! by mcgrew · 2012-03-15 05:56 · Score: 2
  
  Unless they were wiped out by a freak event, it means we're genetically "better".
  Only "better" in the sense that humans fit their environment better than these creatures did when they died out. The only "better" in evolution is "a better fit to the environment." It doesn't mean that any one species is better than another, just that one has an easier time staying alive and breeding.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
99. Re:Fascinating! by mcgrew · 2012-03-15 07:21 · Score: 1
  
  There is no right or wrong way in evolution. It simply is the successful result of change.
  "Successful" needs expanding -- in this context "sucessful" means not dying before you breed. A change that makes breeding or staying alive easier is exceptionally successful.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
100. Re:Fascinating! by mcgrew · 2012-03-15 07:42 · Score: 1
  
  A species becomes extinct when it can't survive in the environment it inhabits. Environments change. If a species lives on walnuts and a fungal disease kills all the walnut trees, the species becomes extinct, as do the species that only feed on the walnut eaters. The walnut disease dies after it's killed the trees, and when walnuts come back the extinct species would again be fit for its environment, but it no longer exists, although it may have a descendant that adapted to a different food source.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
101. Re:Fascinating! by airdweller · 2012-03-15 07:50 · Score: 2
  
  Your ability to string together smart words is impressive. I think I found the missing link between your chair and the computer.
102. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-15 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  and yet the ability to trace cultural influence to us will be nil.
103. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-15 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  You are comparing the invention of written thought to a refinement of mathematics?
  George Bool's interests were into discovering ways to quantify decision making and allow people to evaluate those decision strings. It may have been very abstract and impractical work, but a mathematician(professional or otherwise) finds their work more like art than like engineering.
  At any rate, he had a motivation.
104. Re:Fascinating! by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-15 10:36 · Score: 1
  
  Really? so...some lone individual decided to take his 5 kids and go off on his own to start a farm and live a completely different life? A tribe is still a government. a decision made by 250 people to put down roots and start sowing the land for food is still government....it just happens to be tribal.
105. Re:Fascinating! by boristhespider · 2012-03-15 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  I'm really not convinced of that, in all seriousness. We're printing enormous reams of paper each day - tons of the stuff. It all looks tedious and inconsequential, it's true, but frankly I've studied history and a lot of the study of history is poring over the tedious and inconsequential to tie together a picture of the past. We're printing books - some of them with very high quality paper which is unlikely to degrade rapidly - and some of those high quality books even give details of our technology. It's certainly not beyond imagination that, even if *every single encyclopedia printed in the last year* and *every single non-Comp Sci textbook* is somehow annihilated in the next millennium, someone won't be able to piece together, from Comp Sci textbooks and the reams of technical logs produced by our many technology firms, how to reconstruct what a hard drive is, and some of our filesystems. Then some hard drives will have readable data on them.
  But that's actually beside the point - I don't believe in the first place that every book we produce will die over the next millennium. The Encyclopedia Britannica going online-only is a very sad thing; I fully agree with anyone who's unhappy about that. I have a great fondness for encyclopedias produced by people who at least have their job on the line if they make massive mistakes, unlike the "crowd-sourced" lowest common denominator trash that Wikipedia sometimes serves up -- not to say there aren't Wikipedia articles that are well-written and comprehensive, because there are, just that it's a brave statement that Wikipedia isn't... well, full of lowest common denominator trash, and faces a strong selection bias. It's just that we still produce more than enough physical artifacts that, frankly, I don't see archaeologists in a millennium having anything like the problems we have with artifacts from 3,000 years ago. (Bear in mind that we have little problem piecing together the broad scope of history 1,000 years ago - I'm British, so I naturally focus on England, Wales, Scotland, Norman France, Frankish France, Northern Germany, etc. And we have a very good knowledge of what people wrote back then - we can read the languages and we have plenty of documents. On higher-quality paper than your typical Tor paperback, it's true, but who the fuck wants our civilisation to be remembered for its cheap paperbacks?
106. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:23 · Score: 1
  
  That comment was so stupid I think you gave me cancer.
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
107. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:25 · Score: 1
  
  Can we not just poke our tongues out and throw faeces at each other?
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
108. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  Jesus loves you too
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
109. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:35 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't there some sort of rule about that? If it exists someone has put their penis in it.
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
110. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:43 · Score: 1
  
  It also assumes that you believe in directions
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
111. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  Hvae you been reading any of the stuff coming out of the minds of the latest crop of bioethicists lately?
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
112. Re:Fascinating! by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:45 · Score: 1
  
  Just how far is Fukuishima from Los Angeles anyway?
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
113. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 16:21 · Score: 0
  
  Peanut farmers are not wise, especially ones who like Pumpkin scones!
114. Re:Fascinating! by Sigg3.net · 2012-03-15 22:00 · Score: 1
  
  Tricky illusion that always accompany the proposition of a sequence of events: start & beginning. The human mind connects the dots,regardless of reality.
  go read Hume now, children.
  
  --
  Defining Statistics and Social Research
115. Re:Fascinating! by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-03-16 16:43 · Score: 1
  
  Writing always comes after agriculture. People who don't farm don't have a need to write.
  Well, I can write and I'm not a farmer, so where does that leave your argument, eh? Nowhere, that's where.
  You didn't write that because you NEEDED to.
  I think you understood that I was referring to cultures rather than individuals.
116. Re:Fascinating! by DrVxD · 2012-03-20 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  if the cro-magnons who left cave paintings 30,000 years ago in France could've written something, they would've written something.
  Ah, but it's also said that a picture is worth a thousand words - So clearly the did write something. In shorthand.
  
  --
  Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
117. Re:Fascinating! by Coren22 · 2012-03-20 09:13 · Score: 1
  
  And fought against the reptites?
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Ok, how many more are there? by mfarah · 2012-03-14 10:39 · Score: 4, Informative

Besides Homo Sapiens, there are Neanderthals, Floresians (I ain't calling them "hobbits"), Denisovans and now these?
Pre-history is getting crowded with failed competitors. Yay us?

--
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
1. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anne_Nonymous · 2012-03-14 10:58 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  >> Homo Sapiens, ...Neanderthals, Floresians..., Denisovans
  Also the Orange People of New Jersey.
2. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by erroneus · 2012-03-14 11:11 · Score: 2
  
  You know, the aboriginals look pretty different in many ways. Their bodies look pretty much "normal human" though. I guess it comes down to how much difference do you need before you call them "another kind of human."
3. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by reboot246 · 2012-03-14 11:14 · Score: 2
  
  Don't forget lawyers!
  
  Well, they're almost human . . .
4. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:15 · Score: 0
  
  Unless someone solved the issue recently, those were still around, failed competition or not.
5. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by abigor · 2012-03-14 11:26 · Score: 0
  
  The way species are normally defined is whether or not they can interbreed, and if so, if their offspring are capable of having offspring (think mules).
6. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by tmosley · 2012-03-14 11:29 · Score: 1
  
  Less "failed competitors" and more "kissing cousins", methinks. Probably every one of these species has been folded back into modern humanity. Homo sapiens just happens to be the dominant gene source.
  
  We'll have to look at the DNA to be sure.
7. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Monkey-Man2000 · 2012-03-14 11:32 · Score: 1
  
  This is an excellent point, and all depends IMO on what is considered a species. Colloquially, I think species are generally distinguished by their inability to breed with another group. Hence why all the different breeds of dogs are still Canis lupus familiarias, yet can look drastically different from one.
  
  But there are big exceptions to this colloquial definition such as the parentage of the mules. Similar to a mule, this species-conundrum would also fracture our definitions if the Neanderthal/homo-sapien hybrids prove true as predicted by recent studies.
  
  So, what is a species, and is a definition at this point useful to distinguish how REAL cross-breeding phenomena occur realistically?
  
  --
  This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
8. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by erroneus · 2012-03-14 11:34 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's crap though. We know we have interbred with neanderthals... well, the people who left Africa did anyway. Unfortunately there aren't any really strong divisions because life in all of its forms and continuous evolutions doesn't easily fit within any given definition.
9. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:38 · Score: 0
  
  The way species are normally defined is whether or not they can interbreed, and if so, if their offspring are capable of having offspring (think mules).
  That is how I always understood the distinction between species, but genetic research has reportedly determined that there was inbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Also, virtually identical salamanders located in different wells 50 miles apart are considered separate species (at least for purposes of enforcing the Environmental Protection Act). So what is the dividing line between species?
10. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by jd · 2012-03-14 11:55 · Score: 1
  
  DNA says that some of the cousins did rather more than kiss. So long as it was all legal and proper, that's all right though.
  
  --
  It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
11. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by grouchomarxist · 2012-03-14 12:06 · Score: 2
  
  The species concept is more complicated than that. It is also full of issues. See:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species#Difficulty_of_defining_.22species.22_and_identifying_particular_species
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_Problem
  There are also cases of mules being fertile:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule#Fertility
12. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Michael+Woodhams · 2012-03-14 12:07 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The question "are these sufficiently different to be two species" is inherently a fuzzy one. We tend to be a bit more picky when dealing with our near relatives, so we might call these a different species when for two squirrel groups with a similar level of difference we might call them subspecies. I've seen it argued that an objective taxonomist would put humans, chimps and gorillas all in the same genus, we've classified this lineage into four - gorilla, pan, homo and (extinct) austalopithecus.
  
  --
  Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
13. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 12:25 · Score: 0
  
  Don't celebrate the triumph of Homo Sapiens just yet. The game's not over.
14. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 13:04 · Score: 0
  
  >> (think mules)
  Kinky... just not my kink.
15. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Black+Parrot · 2012-03-14 13:45 · Score: 1
  
  Pre-history is getting crowded with failed competitors. Yay us?
  Well, our ancestors had to eat *something*.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
16. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Randle_Revar · 2012-03-14 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  There are nearly 200 different definitions of "species", take your pick.
  
  --
  Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
17. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by uncanny · 2012-03-14 14:21 · Score: 2
  
  I think they are closer to the bacterium family
18. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 14:22 · Score: 0
  
  It will probably turn out that we have their dna in us. Humans living outside Africa owe up to 4% of their DNA to Neanderthals. Folks living in Asia also have Denisovian dna. It's not so much that they are failed competitors as that all the subspecies came together to make us. Everyone wins.
19. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Randle_Revar · 2012-03-14 14:23 · Score: 1
  
  >how many more are there
  Depends on what you mean. You listed species that co-existed with Homo sapiens, if that is what you mean, there could be a few more to find. If you mean something broader, like Hominina (modern humans and extinct relatives), there is a large number already known, and lots more to come.
  
  --
  Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
20. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by schlachter · 2012-03-14 14:43 · Score: 1
  
  Actually there were many many more branches of hominids that failed survive......the ones you named are just are most recent competition.
  
  --
  My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
21. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 14:53 · Score: 0
  
  I believe the Snookites prefer the term "Oompaloompians"
22. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Smauler · 2012-03-14 17:37 · Score: 1
  
  That definition is fatally flawed though.
  An example : Species A can breed with Species B, B can breed with C, C can breed with D, however D cannot bree with A.
  This is a ring species.
23. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 19:31 · Score: 0
  
  Unfortunately, this is most definately NOT true; taxonomy does not take the possibility of hybridization or sterility into account in most cases. Would that it were true, Just because the issue of a donkey and a horse are sterile, it does not mean a Lippizaner stallion (38 pairs of chromosomes) cannot produce lively, potent offspring with an ordinary horse with about half their number.
  It is not the number of chromosomes that count, in the end, it is their arrangement and expression by their environment.
  It had to go back to school to learn this, and this view is already more than five years old.
24. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by boristhespider · 2012-03-14 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  "Homo sapiens just happens to be the dominant gene source."
  Even that becomes a relatively meaningless statement. What we now call Homo Sapiens is the result of tens of thousands of years of evolution *and* interbreeding with closely-related strains of humanity. We know that non sub-Saharan Africans interbred with Neanderthals (meaning most likely that a lot of African populations also have Neanderthal genes spread through them at a lower level, given humanity's tendency to intermingle along population borders). If these guys were a separate species (whatever that's taken to mean) and came into contact with early "homo sapiens" then they interbred too, and their genes will have spread back Westwards to other populations. Sure, we could say that the genes of Cro-Magnon Man are more-or-less dominant in us, but we're still ultimately a cross-breed. We're not Cro-Magnon Man, even though we resemble him more closely than we resemble Neanderthal Man.
  In the grossly unlikely event of us meeting another human species on Earth again, I've no doubt that we'll interbreed again, and within a few hundred generations or so the new genes will have spread across the whole population.
25. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 02:42 · Score: 0
  
  "your world frightens and confuses me..."
26. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 04:44 · Score: 0
  
  The canonical definition of a (sexual) species is actually that two organisms can interbreed to produce viable offspring. Mules are the textbook example of inviable offspring, thus proving that horses and donkeys are not members of the same species.
27. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by escay · 2012-03-15 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  we probably survived merely by superiority in numbers rather than a genetic/social/physical superiority among the competition. like in a couple of millenia later the world will be just people of chinese descent, going, "Yay us?"
  
  --
  My sig has been answered.
28. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:47 · Score: 1
  
  and even with that example alcohol is still legal
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
29. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by uninformedLuddite · 2012-03-15 13:49 · Score: 1
  
  Explain my mother in law then
  
  --
  The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
30. Re:Ok, how many more are there? by DrVxD · 2012-03-20 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  Well, they're almost human . . .
  No, they really aren't.
  
  --
  Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
End of ice age by cpu6502 · 2012-03-14 10:41 · Score: 1

They lasted til the end of the ice age and then died-out when the earth grew warmer. I wonder why? Any idea what they looked like?

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
1. Re:End of ice age by mfarah · 2012-03-14 10:44 · Score: 2
  
  Perhaps they were Yetis?
  
  --
  "Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
  - Sledge Hammer
2. Re:End of ice age by modmans2ndcoming · 2012-03-14 11:12 · Score: 1
  
  I am sure homo Sapiens expanded into their territory now that the ice age opened natural barriers and...by that time we were sufficiently brutish enough that we probably went to war for their resources.
3. Re:End of ice age by erroneus · 2012-03-14 11:12 · Score: 1
  
  Big change always brings about extinction events. You can bet they lost out on an important food source. One of the things about modern humans is that we can eat so many different kinds of foods. It has kept us going through other major climate changes you know.
"Possible New Human Species Discovered in China" by Tyrannosaur · 2012-03-14 10:48 · Score: 3, Funny

And I thought we got over scientific racism a long time ago...
Re:missing link by ThePeices · 2012-03-14 10:48 · Score: 1

What missing link?
Re:And they were seen at FoxConn factory by Spy+Handler · 2012-03-14 10:49 · Score: 0

go away, racist troll
Christian apologists' response by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 10:50 · Score: 0, Troll

but...but...but.. the world is only 6,000 years old and man was created in his current image by god! There must be some other explanation!
1. Re:Christian apologists' response by jamstar7 · 2012-03-14 11:16 · Score: 1
  
  That 'image' you're holding? It's a balloon animal with a Groucho Marx face drawn on it with magic marker.
  
  --
  Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
2. Re:Christian apologists' response by Black+Parrot · 2012-03-14 13:19 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  but...but...but.. the world is only 6,000 years old and man was created in his current image by god! There must be some other explanation!
  That's why they're a different species: made in someone else's image.
  And survived right up 'til 5500 years before creation, too!
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:And they were seen at FoxConn factory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 10:56 · Score: 0

that's so awesome! I was laughing so hard. It's a shame the human chinese don't treat the sub-human chinese with "equal" rights like we do here in the USA to the subhuman American population. They put them to work making ipad 3 instead of having the humans pay their way to have more subhumans without any fear of repercussion. If America adopted the chinese model we would put the subhumans to work and that would be bad because the establishment would loose a voting base.
Al Gore's weather machine is getting hot too! Tell him to stop before I have to start paying carbon taxes.
Re:Discovered humans in China? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 10:59 · Score: 0

I think we understand that by now.
Re:"Possible New Human Species Discovered in China by pushing-robot · 2012-03-14 11:01 · Score: 1

Well, it's not quite as bad as their last article, "Possible New Human Species Discovered in Cardiff."
Though at least they had the obligatory blurry, shaky video for that one.

--
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Misleading title by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-03-14 11:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Based on the title, I thought that mankind has just made another evolutionary leap! But no, it's actually an old human species, not a new one.

--
Ezekiel 23:20
Re:missing link by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

The missing link was found. And the two new missing links on either side of that, and the new "missing links".
Please, if serious you need to accept that it has become so well studied of a field that scientists actually estimated based on previous research where a "crock-o-duck" should have existed, went there and found the bloody fossils. Same for whales. Your argument has devolved, pun intended, from something that could be respected to practically a parody of Xeno arguing that a runner could never catch a turtle.
If a troll, I may be feeding you, but feeding you is far worse than feeding people who actually use such arguments. Please, just stop.
Re:"Possible New Human Species Discovered in China by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:07 · Score: 0

The problem with racist stereotypes is how painfully true they can be.
Home cooked! by oyenamit · 2012-03-14 11:08 · Score: 2

Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison...

Of course, we know that rest of the human species at the time preferred takeout...
1. Re:Home cooked! by jd · 2012-03-14 11:57 · Score: 1
  
  The ones in Manchester, England, certainly preferred takeout. With stone knives from Essex Culture found in London, Essex lads were partial to finding the best eateries even then.
  
  --
  It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
MBP! FOUND by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:08 · Score: 0

Half man, half bear, half pig! Also new Southpark finally.
Re:missing link by jamstar7 · 2012-03-14 11:10 · Score: 4, Funny

The link between /. commenters and intelligent human beings?

--
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Re:And they were seen at FoxConn factory by tverbeek · 2012-03-14 11:10 · Score: 2

To be fair, that headline was practically begging for someone to interpret it as a reference to current humans, not to a population of hominids that lived in the area we call China thousands of years ago.

--
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why not study the modern, living pygmies instead? by ace37 · 2012-03-14 11:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

We have Pygmies today across Africa. They've endured a lot of human rights issues over the years, and theories are out suggesting Iodine deficiencies are related to their short stature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmies
Why do we see papers about recent human evolutionary theory only when it pertains to extinct peoples? Are the currently living pygmies less studied simply because anthropologists aren't interested in living people, and nobody else is into these fields of science?
Sorry but by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:12 · Score: 0

12000 years ago? Not exactly new is it? :/
Was it Agricola Aurifer? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:16 · Score: 0

Not so extinct....
Re:New Chinese Species by erroneus · 2012-03-14 11:17 · Score: 1

As opposed to "corporatis oppressednus"? What about "imperius oppressednus"? There are all sorts of ideologies with which to oppress people. If you think we, in the west, don't enslave others through various forms, you're quite mistaken. Our hands are cleaner only because there are lots of steps we never see and it's not happening on out dirt... (that damned constitution getting in the way you know)
poor taste? by mug+funky · 2012-03-14 11:23 · Score: 1

i could make a poor taste joke about cheap Chinese knockoffs right about now...
1. Re:poor taste? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 16:21 · Score: 0
  
  I've met people from Red Deer. The description "cave men" is pretty close, but I think "hillbilly" is a little more succinct.
There are probably living human subspecies today by voss · 2012-03-14 11:23 · Score: 2

We just don't recognize them because their bones are buried or cremated and we generally dont go digging up graves.
Insensitive Barbarians by walkerp1 · 2012-03-14 11:26 · Score: 0

A new species you say? How about the master race. The Chinese have been telling us this for thousands of years.
1. Re:Insensitive Barbarians by karzan · 2012-03-14 15:30 · Score: 2
  
  No, no, how can they have been telling us for thousands of years? Every Chinese person knows China has 5000 years of history, while the West has approximately 5 years of history. There were some reported sightings of Westerners once in the Ming dynasty, but this has since been discovered to have been a hoax, constructed from a bearded monkey on stilts.
'The Hobbit' Race Threatened With Lawsuit by geonik · 2012-03-14 11:27 · Score: 1

It won't be long until lawyers from the Saul Zaentz Company in California start threatening the 'Hobbit' race of Flores... not even extinction will save them!
RE:intelligent human beings by Forty+Two+Tenfold · 2012-03-14 11:29 · Score: 2

Huh? I thought they actually found NEW (as in living, just formed) human species...

--
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Re:And they were seen at FoxConn factory by tmosley · 2012-03-14 11:31 · Score: 1

Who says they aren't related, in much the same way that Neanderthals interbred with humans, such that some of their DNA persists in certain populations? To say that modern Europeans ARE Neanderthals is a bit much, but so is the opposite.
Re:New Chinese Species by CaptainLugnuts · 2012-03-14 11:33 · Score: 1

There's always an oppressor. If not you have anarchy, which could be called oppression by the strong.
Red Deer Cave People? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:49 · Score: 0

They're not extinct! I just got their new single off iTunes.
Re:missing link by jd · 2012-03-14 11:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Then you need a better filesystem integrity checker.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:missing link by blind+monkey+3 · 2012-03-14 12:05 · Score: 1

This (Futurama S06E09 exerpt) sums it up quite well imo.

--
BM3
Re:missing link by Empiric · 2012-03-14 12:22 · Score: 1

Because... there are no missing links, but that's what the discovery of the next one will be another one of.

--
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
New subspecies found by rcamans · 2012-03-14 12:33 · Score: 1

Politicians. Apparently descended from some inbred Neanderthals...

--
wake up and hold your nose
Score one for open-access publishing by damn_registrars · 2012-03-14 12:47 · Score: 4, Informative

The journal article that is being linked to is open-access. There is no paywall, regardless of where you are accessing it from. You can download it and print as many copies as you want, you can even download it and repost it in its entirety on your own website if you feel like it. You can do the same with every article in the PLoS journals as well.

--
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Re:missing link by DJRumpy · 2012-03-14 13:18 · Score: 1

I read the summary and immediately got a flash of 'The Tomorrow People' ;)
Too many Godzilla movies in my youth I guess...
Re:missing link by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 13:19 · Score: 0

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/9bjufz/futurama-evolution-under-attack
No matter how many fossils we find, there will always be missing one. Please, don't be that silly orangutan...
"extinct giant red deer" Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 14:50 · Score: 0

How can the OP Put that in the Summary when it is completely false? The Red Deer population is thriving and is quite abundant all over the world.
1. Re:"extinct giant red deer" Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 03:12 · Score: 0
  
  Because you are an idiot.
I have only ONE question. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 15:08 · Score: 0

Does it work on $1 bills?
Extinct grammar by Ghaoth · 2012-03-14 15:43 · Score: 1

"apparent taste for the extinct giant red deer" It is interesting to ponder how they had a taste for an extinct animal...perhap my grammar is out of date.

--
Nos Morituri te salutamus
Red Deer Cave people... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 15:58 · Score: 0

Red Deer Cave people...
Wow! You ARE what you eat!
Re:"Possible New Human Species Discovered in China by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 16:47 · Score: 0

People call them "Welsh", a hybrid between humans and sheep.
Re:missing link by Internetuser1248 · 2012-03-14 16:53 · Score: 2

While you are right that his comment is idiotic, it is not because missing links were found, it is because modern biology does not consider it necessary for any link to even exist and they are therefore not missing. Google 'punctuated equilibrium' for details. Of course the term missing link was devised by naysayers to evolution before most prehuman ancestors were categorised so it is not entirely incorrect to say the missing links were found.
old is new again (I was hoping for trolls) by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-03-14 17:42 · Score: 1

Wow, I thought they were talking about a new species, but it turns out they're talking about old ones.
The mix of characteristics suggests that they might have been a distinct species, but may be just a mixed ancestry of barely premodern human types.
May have? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 19:37 · Score: 0

human-like species "may" have co-existed with modern humans as late as 11,500 years ago.
that uncertainty always took the excitement from such news!
Genetics or Taxonomy? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 21:05 · Score: 0

My Wife is a Molecular Geneticist and tends to get rather bent out of shape over these kind of announcements because half the time the "new species" is genetically identical or genetically similar enough to the current one that inter-breeding would be possible, hence dissolving the "new species" spin.
Or, to put it more simply...
Taxonomists and Archaeologists are not in a good position to label anything as a "new species"
1. Re:Genetics or Taxonomy? by niado · 2012-03-15 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  Considering taxonomy is the science of identifying, naming, and classifying species I believe taxonomists are in a reasonably good position to do so.
  
  Though it is exciting that scientific breakthroughs in genetics over the last ~20 years have helped revise classifications and clarify relationships between 'species'. Modern taxonomy has been going on for nearly three hundred years with pretty much only anatomy to work with.
  
  The 'species problem' may finally be surmounted at some point in the future, if they can set a genetic standard to differentiate species. We currently still have legacy classifications for many species which can definitely interbreed and produce viable offspring, and many others that can likely do so (including hominoids).
Re:intelligent human beings by quenda · 2012-03-14 21:35 · Score: 1

Huh? I thought they actually found NEW (as in living, just formed) human species...
I was hoping for an ancient one, living undisturbed (until now) in some forgotten valley high in Tibet.
You were not the only one to be sorely disappointed at the mention of fossils.
Re:intelligent human beings by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 23:46 · Score: 0

Nope, just an old species, turns out it's been discontinued, just like Plymouth and Saturn.
I expect full disclosure in The National Enquirer and other science publications that frequently carry Chinese Archaeology , soon.
If you want to see a NEW improved human species, just send your wife around when shes ovulating. I gotcha covered.
Typical by asdf7890 · 2012-03-15 01:23 · Score: 1

Typical of the Chinese manufacturing industry: they saw other parts of the world making relatively intelligent hairless primates, and decided to make their own knock-off version!
good article by nidaye · 2012-03-15 01:23 · Score: 0

You could be the focus among the people; you could be the one who never ordinary. http://www.replica-aaa.com/"> replica Hermes is looking for its host, the highest quality, the best color and the best service is what we can provide to you. You deserve to have one.
Re:Why not study the modern, living pygmies instea by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 02:06 · Score: 0

Actually there's a large amount of research into this that has been going on for the last 30 years or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_HapMap_Project is one example. There are mtDNA and Haploid projects that have described human migration patterns. DNA from ancestral groups like the San (bushmen) Melanesians, and Australian Aboriginals has played a large part in charting these migrations.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/09/24/038247/australian-aboriginal-dna-suggests-70000-year-history - it's even on Slashdot.
John 3:16 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 02:40 · Score: 0

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Re:missing link by Hognoxious · 2012-03-15 02:54 · Score: 1

Found, but throws a 503.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:missing link by Hognoxious · 2012-03-15 03:01 · Score: 1

No matter how many fossils we find, there will always be missing one.

Generations are discrete, so eventually you'd reach a point where there are no missing links.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Why not study the modern, living pygmies instea by Disfnord · 2012-03-15 03:06 · Score: 1

Just because you aren't reading about something on Slashdot doesn't mean it isn't happening.
paleo mafia hit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 03:07 · Score: 0

encased in rock ... hmmm.
"fossil" ? these bones are only 11,000 years old. not really old enough to be fossilized, or encased in rock ... Sounds like the mafia was operating in asia back then.
somebody should analyze the rock for clues as to how they died. communities in those days usually had funeral rites, which i'm pretty sure didn't involve concrete.
paleo mafia hit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 03:23 · Score: 0

encased in rock? hmmm - sounds like a mafia hit.
but more seriously, 11,000 years ago is too recent to fossilize bones and encase them in rock. paleo communities usually had funeral rites and such, and I've never heard of them using concrete. somebody should analyze the rock the bones were in to figure out how that person died. is this like pompei? was there some event that killed all these people and left some of them encased in rock?
Idiocracy by DarthVain · 2012-03-15 03:28 · Score: 1

Have you seen how they reproduce?
In another 10,000 years everyone will be the Orange People of New Jersey...
If the Red Deer people had any writing, it was probably pointing out how stupid Homo Sapiens were and how much more intelligent they were.
Then they froze to death, were killed by Homo Sapiens, or were eaten by a Grue.
Re:intelligent human beings by tehcyder · 2012-03-15 04:05 · Score: 1

Huh? I thought they actually found NEW (as in living, just formed) human species...
I was hoping for an ancient one, living undisturbed (until now) in some forgotten valley high in Tibet. You were not the only one to be sorely disappointed at the mention of fossils.
You don't think there might have been a bit more publicity if they had found Shangri La?

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re: New Species by bekslash · 2012-03-15 04:13 · Score: 0

So in other words these are part of the species called "humans". What else you got?
Re:intelligent human beings by doston · 2012-03-15 04:28 · Score: 2

If they were found alive, they'd just put them to work at Foxconn making iPads. The only reason Yeti has been left alone is its hands are too big to handle the little instruments.
Ancient history is written 5000 years back by NewYork · 2012-03-15 05:24 · Score: 1

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ancient_history

--
Casteism
Then came Homo Sapiens and the answer to existence by bodland · 2012-03-15 05:36 · Score: 1

we were so advanced we just made shit up and systematically killed off anything and everything that didn't fit our new belief....
Re:intelligent human beings by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 05:43 · Score: 0

Already done. Cheesy way to go about it though, sorry to disappoint.
Re:missing link by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-15 09:12 · Score: 0

No matter how many fossils we find, there will always be missing one.
Generations are discrete, so eventually you'd reach a point where there are no missing links.
We should start by digging out your grand mother and work from there...
Don't you see such thing is impossible to accomplish? Anyone refusing to see the obvious truth without each generation in front of them are acting just like a silly orangutan.
Re:intelligent human beings by nobodie · 2012-03-15 14:26 · Score: 1

The Chinese claim that they have found Shangri La. It is in the northwest corner of Yunnan province, on the Tibetan Plateau. I went there a few years ago and it was definitely high up, I had trouble breathing and came down after a day,much to my wife's disappointment. It is quite .... Chinese.... in a Tibetan way. Most of the people there are Tibetan, but the business owners are mostly Han Chinese. It is a relatively popular tourist destination, but more for backpackers, at that time anyway (@ 10 years ago).
So, you can go, it is a good trip if you like lite adventure travel.

--
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Re:"Possible New Human Species Discovered in China by Tyrannosaur · 2012-03-15 16:49 · Score: 0

Actually the homeland of the sheeple is the United States. Trust me, I observe them firsthand every day. .....I just said "sheeple." I am so sorry. :(
Re:missing link by RockDoctor · 2012-03-15 22:26 · Score: 1

it is because modern biology does not consider it necessary for any link to even exist and they are therefore not missing. Google 'punctuated equilibrium' for details.
You have either misunderstood punctuated equilibrium really badly, or expressed it terribly.
The distinction between conventional neo-Darwinian ideas and punctuated equilibrium ideas is in the temporal distribution of rate of change of the species. Conventional noe-Darwinian ideas have relatively steady, frequent small changes in response to environmental changes ("evolution by creeps", in the famous joke) and therefore lots of opportunities for the fossilisation of intermediate forms. In contrast, punctuated equilibrium posits organisms accommodating to their environmental changes most of the time in ways that are not visible in their anatomy (say, by behavioural change, or subtle biochemical changes) - that's the "equilibrium" part of the idea. However eventually the required degree of change exceeds what can be accommodated by cryptic changes, and substantial change occurs in the body over a comparatively short period of time (the "punctuation", or in the old joke, "evolution by jerks"). In consequence, the intermediate forms are only around (and potentially fossilisable) for a short period of time and so are relatively unlikely to to be found in the fossil record.
The "missing link" forms do exist in both ideas, but for differing periods of time. With fossilisation (and human discovery of and identification of the fossil) being essentially a random sampling event, the probability of actually seeing the intermediate forms is crudely proportional to the length of time that the intermediate forms exist for.
In consequence, to distinguish between the two processes is only going to be possible with a good statistical analysis of abundant data across an interval of gradual environmental change with steady sediment deposition. Which data is expensive and time-consuming to acquire.
Of course, it is entirely possible that both styles of change occur, at different times in the same lineage of organisms.
In the laboratory, using fast-generating, high-population organism (i.e. microbes), the evidence seems to be that both processes occur. Which is a typically messy biological result.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:missing link by RockDoctor · 2012-03-15 22:32 · Score: 1

No matter how many fossils we find, there will always be missing one.
Generations are discrete, so eventually you'd reach a point where there are no missing links.
Which would be the point at which you're looking at a complete genetic profile of every member of the species in question.
We're nearly there for some rare species in captive breeding programmes (when the motivation of the genetic work is to try to preserve the largest possible amount of the remaining genetic variation in the species) ; we're not going to get there for organisms which are not currently alive, because DNA decays rapidly in most circumstances.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:Why not study the modern, living pygmies instea by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-03-16 05:38 · Score: 1

We have Pygmies today across Africa. They've endured a lot of human rights issues over the years
Yeah, they've endured a lot of human rights issues over the years, let's start pricking them with needles. That would fly...

--
Ezekiel 23:20
Re:And they were seen at FoxConn factory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-19 00:44 · Score: 0

Hey, I recently saw "The Help". And years ago there was "Mississippi Burning". Looks to me like not everyone in the USA had equal rights during those times in the sixties either. Possibly not even today.