Fossil teeth study takes bite out of Neanderthal-European link

By Geoffrey Mohan
October 21, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Scientists seeking the missing link between modern Europeans and Neanderthals ought to head back to Africa, according to a new study that could prune some of the younger branches of the evolutionary tree.

Researchers took another look at a common fossil used to date early humans – teeth. By looking at the pattern of points on molars of European fossils, older African and Asian fossils, and modern humans, they arrived at a picture of what the teeth of a common ancestor might have looked like.

Photos: A New View of Early Human Ancestors

“What we realized is that none of the species we have in the fossil record is similar to that ancestor morphology that we calculated as the most likely one,” said Aida Gomez-Robles, an anthropologist at George Washington University and lead author of the study published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We think that we didn’t find it because we actually don’t have this ancestor in the fossil record.”

Paleontologists have offered various fossil finds as a candidate for the common ancestor to Europeans, paramount among them Homo heidelbergensis, a tall and strong species that wandered out of Africa less than 800,000 years ago, and which was named for the southwestern German city near which it was found.
www.latimes.com...

Not sure what to make of this seems like they are saying there maybe no Neanderthal mix in Euros...if I am reading this wrong lemme know... where is Punkinworks to explain this stuff.

reply to post by Spider879

......if I am reading this wrong lemme know... where is Punkinworks to explain this stuff....

Take a closer look at what is said.

they arrived at a picture of what the teeth of a common ancestor might have looked like.

“What we realized is that none of the species we have in the fossil record is similar to that ancestor morphology that we calculated as the most likely one,”

This is some grad students and their prof getting out a paper. THERE IS NO DATA!" Just " might have" and "most likely"

It is publish or perish Bafflegab* at it's finest

* From the title of a paper by Dr. Scott Armstrong on how to get a peer-reviewed paper published.

Yah, I'm guessing that's what they're saying.

crimvelvet
reply to post by Spider879

 

......if I am reading this wrong lemme know... where is Punkinworks to explain this stuff....

Take a closer look at what is said.

they arrived at a picture of what the teeth of a common ancestor might have looked like.

“What we realized is that none of the species we have in the fossil record is similar to that ancestor morphology that we calculated as the most likely one,”

This is some grad students and their prof getting out a paper. THERE IS NO DATA!" Just " might have" and "most likely"

It is publish or perish Bafflegab* at it's finest

* From the title of a paper by Dr. Scott Armstrong on how to get a peer-reviewed paper published.

So in other words they are guessing??

And we also have other discoveries ..........

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE...........


The genetic analysis shows that the individual’s mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal. Since this DNA is transmitted from a mother to her child, the researchers conclude that it was a “female Neanderthal who mated with male Homo sapiens.”

First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found

Other questions to think about....

Why no archeological Neanderthal evidence anywhere in Africa ?

They certainly were present in the Middle East.

Something must have stopped them from migrating.

And, where was the last place that had a high Neanderthal presence ?

When did the 'out breeding' get to the level below 10% ?

Perhaps the early to middle hybrids were a kind of 'worker class' ?

Another interesting theory.....

Origins of modern language are ten times older than thought and could date back half a million years, according to Dutch researchers

It contradicts the popular idea that our modern language began with a sudden emergence of modernity presumably due to one or a few genetic mutations that gave rise to language

The scientists claim that far from being slow brutes, Neanderthals' cognitive capacities and culture were comparable to ours

Neanderthals talked like us half a million years ago and could even have shaped the language we speak today


One fact for sure is, the whole Neanderthal thing has blown away many mainstream ideas !!

It's a confusing article.

The theory goes that both humans and Neanderthals shared a common Homo erectus ancestor about 800 000 years ago.

The idea is that Homo erectus developed into different forms of humans in Europe and in Africa.
In the long periods of the ice-age Neanderthals developed certain adaptions, while modern humans developed in more temperate regions.

When the two groups met again, possibly from about 40 000 years ago (not quite sure) they had been separated for a long time.
What happened as they gradually met and how different they were (cousins or a different species?) remains speculative.

However, this article seems to try and find a common ancestor from various forms of Homo erectus.
It says nothing about whether they inter-bred when the met each other again.

I suppose it's an important question, just to make sure that whatever genetic material humans shared with Neanderthals wasn't a result of having a common ancestor, rather than later interbreeding.

To me it seems that Homo heidelbergensis (just a regional find of Homo erectus) was not the common ancestor according to a tooth analysis they did (it could have been a third species).
According to whatever data they used for dental observation (grooves, not DNA or anything objective) they couldn't find an exact common ancestor.
The exact nature of the analysis isn't given, or their methodology, or what they mean by morphology.
They could have simply fed various pictures of hominid teeth (along with modern human teeth - although I'd guess they'd vary widely regionally) into some computer program which made a combination of teeth as a model tooth, and because it's a cocktail of everything they deduced this must be the comparative ancestral tooth.
Basically they turned up nothing, except to say that the exact common ancestor is not yet in the fossil record.

Nevertheless, I'd agree with their findings in as far as the exact ancestor (or strain of Homo erectus) of modern humans hasn't been found yet, but Homo erectus was around for an awfully long time (at least 1.8 million years - 143 thousand years ago), and the hominid fossils we have so far on Neanderthal man couldn't even fill a truck.

I recall seeing that Neanderthal DNA revealed their diet was almost wolf-like, that is, it consisted almost entirely of meat.
Although there's been a politically correct attempt to humanize Neanderthals, not only physically by basing reconstructions on modern human looks, but also by inventing entire fanciful cultures, the evidence is scant.
I'd say they were essentially powerful carnivorous apes, who took on big game and the mega-fauna as prey.

Both Homo erectus and Neanderthal man had a conically-shaped hominid chest (a virtual breast-armor), and a thick bone structure very different to ours.
In that sense both are more similar to each other, rather than modern humans.

reply to post by Spider879


Hey there spider

Well then, not sure make of what they said, as they have based their conclusions on old assumptions and have not kept abreast of the lastest work.
Namely that the modern human/Neanderthal/denisovan split goes back more than a million years,and that modern humans and Africans both have separate un identified ancestors in each lineage.
And seeing as how teeth evolve in response to environmental conditions, namely diet and tool use, one would expect divergence in dentions as you move forward in time, which is exactly what you have.
European dentition has evolved in response to a long history of agriculture and food processing. European teeth are very generalized in form, as compared to afrodonty, which has retained some of the mass additive features of archaics, the same with the dentitions of some native americans, who retained a different set of archaic features, placing them and Africans at opposite ends of the dental spectrum.
Two of the three schools of odontology, Russian and Japanese, see sundadonty as an undifferentiated dentition of very early modern humans, as compared to sinodonty and afrodonty which represent trait specialization, and European dentitions which is very generalised.
The affinities between the dentitions of He, Neanderthal, and native north Americans helps illustrate a connective link between these populations.

reply to post by halfoldman


Hello halfoldman,
The assertion that Neanderthal was a strict carnivore is absolutely off base. Neanderthal are known to have had an extremely diverse diet, where the environment permitted. I'll try to find the article that shows that European hsn utilized over a hundred species of plants, for food, and medicine. New work also shows they did fish, but likely didn't collect shellfish, they didn't hunt small game as
their physiology wasn't adapted to such activities.

Spider879

crimvelvet
reply to post by Spider879

 

......if I am reading this wrong lemme know... where is Punkinworks to explain this stuff....

Take a closer look at what is said.

they arrived at a picture of what the teeth of a common ancestor might have looked like.

“What we realized is that none of the species we have in the fossil record is similar to that ancestor morphology that we calculated as the most likely one,”

This is some grad students and their prof getting out a paper. THERE IS NO DATA!" Just " might have" and "most likely"

It is publish or perish Bafflegab* at it's finest

* From the title of a paper by Dr. Scott Armstrong on how to get a peer-reviewed paper published.

So in other words they are guessing??

From what I have read, there is some supposition but it is supported by morphometric analysis and phylogenetic statistics which were used to reconstruct the most likely morphological dentition of what could be a new undiscovered hominid ancestor in Africa. The reason this study was undertaken was to reconcile the paleontological record(fossils) with the molecular evidence(DNA analysis) which indicated a large discrepancy in when the fossil record suggests the line of H. Neanderthalensis and H. Sapiens diverged compared to when the DNA says we should have diverged.

The study didn't take into account or look at potential genetic admixture in Europe and instead focused on the fact that their data suggests a potential new undiscovered hominid that should be located in Africa. I certainly wouldn't go so far as the other poster to say this is a bunch of grad students trying to publish data or perish. Everyone involved in this is either a professor or post doctoral fellow at GW university. Anyway... the implication is that modern humans and Neanderthal had a currently unknown ancestor who was NOT H. Erectus or any of its close relatives/morphological brothers. There was educated guesswork involved based on deductions from the data they compiled but I wouldn't call it just random guessing. I don't know that I particularly agree with their findings but I haven't read the actual paper or gone through the citations yet.

Here is a link to another article that explains it in fairly easy terms. www.sci-news.com...

Here is a link to a National Academy of Sciences abstract... www.pnas.org...

And here is further work done by Dr. Gomez-Robles( she apparently likes teeth) scholar.google.com...

reply to post by peter vlar


This study may drive the planning for future excavations in places where this ancestor might have been, ie to places where layers of sedimentary rock has been exposed and are of the proper age to contain traces of this HS?

I would suspect that we actually already have bones and tools of these people but they have not been recognized as such.

reply to post by punkinworks10

I wouldn't say they were always largely carnivorous, and they survived as a species for a very long time, over a pretty broad range.
I'd say they were adaptable to a degree.

However, if one looks at hunter gatherers in historic times, almost 70 percent of the food is plant material gathered by women.
In that sense Neanderthals would have run into trouble in some of their environments.
I think I saw somewhere that Ice Age Europe only had about 20 species of edible plants, and most of these weren't very widespread or nutritious.
But I'm sure they ate plants when they were available.

Nevertheless, there's little doubt from the physique alone that during most of their evolution they hunted big game.

Their muscle groups and injuries also suggest that they hunted differently to humans.
They were not good at throwing, but good at stabbing.
They probably got real close to their prey.

It may sound scary to us, but that was probably the height of their culture - killing animals at close range.

But all their brawn would have been worthless in the face of human weapons that could kill at a distance.

Nevertheless, the human occupation of Europe didn't happen immediately.
It wasn't a quick colonization, or some kind of spear-tipped Jihad or crusade.
It seems to be a slow retreat by the Neanderthals and the mega-fauna that may or may not have been directly linked to humans.
It could have been mainly climate and habitat change.

Hanslune
reply to post by peter vlar

 

This study may drive the planning for future excavations in places where this ancestor might have been, ie to places where layers of sedimentary rock has been exposed and are of the proper age to contain traces of this HS?

I would suspect that we actually already have bones and tools of these people but they have not been recognized as such.

edit on 22/10/13 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

That could very well be the case. I've seen plenty of backrooms overflowing with unidentified remains. well overflowing might be a bit of a stretch but I'm sure you've seen it yourself once or twice. As time goes on I also think we'll be able to better utilize the molecular data to pinpoint not just when things happened but even where, which would give us some great starting points for new excavation sites. Whether this pans out or not, it's still a well done study that will be an excellent jumping off point and possibly give us new clues and to me, that's always the good part. Sometimes trying to answer the question is more fun than knowing the answer.

There certainly appears a mindset within the current "Early Human" professional experts, scientists etc, that all early largish primates seemed to mate with each other and form other species with gay abandon, or mutate with their environment etc etc and eventually became modern humans in Africa.

Considering modern humans have only been studying ancient humans, with any real science, for not much more than 130 years or so, there is an awful amount of "Guessing" on their part.

So lets look at the current Primates in Africa as a comparison.

So ancient "Supposed Homos" use to interbreed???

So can we assume that current Primates interbreed?

Is there any evidence that current Ancient tribe Africans Humans breed with, say Gorillas? or Chimps?

Is there any evidence that Current Gorillas breed with say Chimps or Bonobos?

Being a similar size, do Chimps breed with Baboons?

Being Higher primates, would Orangutangs breed with Chimps or Gorillas?

Who did the Gigatopithecus breed with in China and south Asia to become a 15' tall Super Primate?

If all the Ancient primates bred with each other to become Modern Humans and Gorillas in Africa, why dont the current primates?....or has Evolution stopped Completely, or do we just live in a tiny speck of time, and havent got a clue as to what really happened..

Personally I go for the last.....No clue, Its all guessing.

halfoldman
reply to post by punkinworks10

 

I wouldn't say they were always largely carnivorous, and they survived as a species for a very long time, over a pretty broad range.
I'd say they were adaptable to a degree.

However, if one looks at hunter gatherers in historic times, almost 70 percent of the food is plant material gathered by women.
In that sense Neanderthals would have run into trouble in some of their environments.
I think I saw somewhere that Ice Age Europe only had about 20 species of edible plants, and most of these weren't very widespread or nutritious.
But I'm sure they ate plants when they were available.

Nevertheless, there's little doubt from the physique alone that during most of their evolution they hunted big game.

Their muscle groups and injuries also suggest that they hunted differently to humans.
They were not good at throwing, but good at stabbing.
They probably got real close to their prey.

while there were certainly large obstacles in long term survival for Neanderthal populations in Europe, you have to keep in mind that not all of Europe was an icy wasteland nor was it the sole domain of Neanderthal who ranged from the middle east all the way up to the coldest climates of the era. Their diet varied as much as their habitat. I'm not sure that their physique is an indication of what they hunted as much as it is an environmental adaptation to colder climes, but that point is still hotly debated so I can't say for certain one way or the other.

gort51
There certainly appears a mindset within the current "Early Human" professional experts, scientists etc, that all early largish primates seemed to mate with each other and form other species with gay abandon, or mutate with their environment etc etc and eventually became modern humans in Africa.

Considering modern humans have only been studying ancient humans, with any real science, for not much more than 130 years or so, there is an awful amount of "Guessing" on their part.

So lets look at the current Primates in Africa as a comparison.

So ancient "Supposed Homos" use to interbreed???

I'm not sure I follow. Are you asking if for example chimps and gorillas mated? or Australopithecus and Chimps mated? or are you asking if modern humans and Neanderthal mated?

So can we assume that current Primates interbreed?

you CAN if you like but we all know what happens when we assume...

Is there any evidence that current Ancient tribe Africans Humans breed with, say Gorillas? or Chimps?

none because it's not genetically possible. Just ask the Russians, they tried mating modern humans and other apes back in the 1950's

Is there any evidence that Current Gorillas breed with say Chimps or Bonobos?

no again, their habitats do not overlap

Being a similar size, do Chimps breed with Baboons?

again...habitats not remotely compatible. they just don't ever meet. and if they did the genetic split was so long ago that there would be no offspring

Being Higher primates, would Orangutangs breed with Chimps or Gorillas?

Orangutans split off about 12-16 MYA from the line that brought gorillas, chimps, bobobos and modern humans. they aren't compatible breeding material

Who did the Gigatopithecus breed with in China and south Asia to become a 15' tall Super Primate?

nobody, the largest of the 3 known Gigantopithecus specimens we know of, G. Blackie, was only 3 meters or 9.8 ft tall

If all the Ancient primates bred with each other to become Modern Humans and Gorillas in Africa, why dont the current primates?....or has Evolution stopped Completely, or do we just live in a tiny speck of time, and havent got a clue as to what really happened..

Where are you getting all of this about archaic species interbreeding to create new species?

[Personally I go for the last.....No clue, Its all guessing.

yes, there's a lot of guesswork here but not by anthropologists

reply to post by peter vlar

I'd say physique is generally a good indicator of what a species was primarily evolved to do (and if they evolved in the cold, they couldn't have been very efficient gatherers, mainly because there was very little to gather), which means they did it for a very long time.

As long as they had the big animals to hunt, they survived.

They must have been adaptable to a degree, but for them going into what we would consider a "temperate zone" would probably be as harmful long-term as thrusting a tribe of bushmen (for example) into the ice age.

halfoldman
reply to post by peter vlar

 

They must have been adaptable to a degree, but for them going into what we would consider a "temperate zone" would probably be as harmful long-term as thrusting a tribe of bushmen into the ice age.

edit on 22-10-2013 by halfoldman because: (no reason given)

How long would you consider long term? They cohabitated with modern humans, and by cohabitated I mean the same villages/camps as modern humans in what is now Israel and Lebanon for approximately 50,000 years and the morphology didn't change.

reply to post by peter vlar

Actually there's no undisputed proof on that, and finding various fossils in one sediment does not necessarily mean they all lived together, especially if an event such as a cave-in could have disrupted the site.

But let's assume they did, and back then it could have been a very fertile region, with loads of animals that could have supported both human and Neanderthal lifestyles.

I'm not saying they couldn't have co-inhabited at various points, or used the same shelters (actually there's some evidence that humans eventually took over their sites, although we don't know for sure if this happened as a direct conquest, or whether humans found them empty).

Perhaps over that time humans advanced from the south and retreated at some points, whereas Neanderthals advanced from the north and retreated.

Maybe when life got tough they moved south and hunted humans.
Easy prey compared to a wooly rhinoceros.

They could have had the upper hand over smaller humans for thousands of years.
It would have changed when we invented projectiles...

reply to post by peter vlar

Such an interesting post, because prehistory is really much conjecture.

But I think the lack of morphology is a sign that a species is no longer evolving, and when species no longer adapt or evolve they head for extinction.

The Neandethals were perhaps too highly adapted and too specialized.

They couldn't evolve fast enough.

But that's OK, they seem to have lasted for something like 400 000 years!
Another possibility is that they did evolve, and became modern humans (possible, but I think it's unlikely).