Shedding our penis spines helped us become human, DNA study hints (Genetic Engineering?!)

There is no evidence that these genes were ever expressed in ancient humans. When you consider the quote:

When the scientists checked their genetic discoveries against the Neanderthal genome, they found the same chunks of DNA were missing, meaning the DNA was lost more than 800,000 years ago, which is when our human ancestors split from the Neanderthal lineage

It is clear that it is assumed that ancient human ancestors had these "chunks of DNA". The fact that they did not turn up in the Neanderthal genome is taken as evidence that we lost these chunks more than 800,000 years ago, which would in fact be begging the question. They did not present positive evidence that these "chunks" were actually ever present.

reply to post by FOXMULDER147


no , you know you are on ATS when the thread title includes unevidenced speculative implication of " genetic engineering "

reply to post by anon72


Well, see, the thing is... they estimate that we lost the genes more than 800,000 years ago... but... Well... Absolutely no primates actually HAVE penis spines (whether that regards a penile bone, or the sort of barbs that cats have, I dunno, but in either case, primates don't have 'em) and as for facial whiskers... do you shave? That's them. We don't have vibrissae whiskers like say, cats do... but again that's par for the course for primates. Even the really primitive ones like lemurs and tarsiers lack whiskers and any sort of spines with their penises.

It would seem that the actual genes were lost shortly after we and the Rodents parted ways (that's right, primate's closest clade is the one with mole rats) which was a long, long, long, long, LONG LONG longlonglonglong time before there was anything even resembling a member of the Hominoidea superfamily.

reply to post by jclmavg


I think yours was the best. How did they know they ever had the block of missing DNA.