Sciencegasm

[Undertoad]

I had one recently from this bloggingheads.tv session.

It turns out that what we know about Neanderthals is increasing rapidly because they are now studying the DNA - and it's revolutionizing the field of paleontology. Remember the map of ancient human movement, well Neanderthals separated from that group really early on, and moved to Eastern Europe, where they evolved separately.

- We now know that humans and Neanderthals mated and 1 - 4% of our genes match Neanderthal genes. (It may be that the Neanderthals didn't die out, but were absorbed into the rest of the human population!)

- Humans separated from Neanderthals about 460,000 years ago. All humans and all Neanderthals share maternal DNA from that point.

- It used to be that a Neanderthal fossil wasn't really interesting if there wasn't enough there. Maybe you find a complete set of bones, but maybe you find only a tooth. Well, now, you get the genetic material out of the tooth and you can find out more.

- For example, all Neanderthals had type O blood. Also, red hair. This is stuff that couldn't be developed from fossils.

- Neanderthals varied from each other, less than modern humans vary from each other.

- The computers sequence all the genomes they can find, so some of the stuff you'll get is from the soil, from bacteria, etc. One time there was a forensic case in Germany where one type of DNA kept coming up. It turned out to be the DNA of a woman who worked in the cotton swab factory.

- Drill a hole into the earth at any random place in the world, give your sample to the computers to figure out, and chances are you'll find Wooly Mammoth DNA!

- It's really hard to figure out what one particular gene does. One way to figure it out is to put the gene into a mouse and see what happens. (Aha, the mouse is a redhead - thus, this gene prevents the enzymes/proteins that color the hair in such-n-such way.)