Related papers: Hominin evolution was caused by introgression from…
A variant of microcephalin, MCPH1 gene, was introgressed about 37,000 years ago into Homo sapiens genetic pool from an archaic (Homo erectus) lineage and rose to exceptionally high frequency of around 70 percent worldwide today. It is…
The following manuscript reviews various theories of bipedalism and provides a holistic answer to human evolution. There are two questions regarding bipedalism: i) why were the earliest hominins partially bipedal? and ii) why did hominins…
We will give a simple, unified, possible explanation of several debated genetic issues on today's humans, Neandertals and Denisovans. In particular it is shown by means of a simple mathematical model why there is little genetic variation in…
About 2% of human genetic polymorphisms have been hypothesized to arise via multinucleotide mutations (MNMs), complex events that generate SNPs at multiple sites in a single generation. MNMs have the potential to accelerate the pace at…
How did the human species evolve the capacity not just to communicate complex ideas to one another but to hold such conversations from across the globe, using remote devices constructed from substances that do not exist in the natural…
Mendez et al. recently report the identification of a Y chromosome lineage from an African American that is an outgroup to all other known Y haplotypes, and report a time to most recent common ancestor, TMRCA, for human Y lineages that is…
Considering the recent experimental discovery of Green et al that present day non-Africans have 1 to 4% of their nuclear DNA of Neanderthal origin, we propose here a model which is able to quantify the interbreeding events between Africans…
The Roma people, living throughout Europe, are a diverse population linked by the Romani language and culture. Previous linguistic and genetic studies have suggested that the Roma migrated into Europe from South Asia about 1000-1500 years…
The Sapient Paradox is the apparently unexplainable time delay of several ten thousand years following the arrival of Homo sapiens in Asia and Europe and before the introduction of impressive innovations with the agricultural revolution.…
The emergence of agriculture is suggested to have driven extensive human population growths. However, genetic evidence from maternal mitochondrial genomes suggests major population expansions began before the emergence of agriculture.…
According to the "hard-steps" model, the origin of humanity required "successful passage through a number of intermediate steps" (so-called "hard" or "critical" steps) that were intrinsically improbable with respect to the total time…
Darwin introduced the concept of the "living fossil" to describe species belonging to lineages that have experienced little evolutionary change, and suggested that species in more slowly evolving lineages are more prone to extinction (1).…
A series of studies have revealed the among-population components of genetic variation are higher for the paternal Y chromosome than for the maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which indicates sex-biased migrations in human populations.…
Although there has been much interest in estimating divergence and admixture from genomic data, it has proven difficult to distinguish gene flow after divergence from alternative histories involving structure in the ancestral population.…
Demographic change of human populations is one of the central questions for delving into the past of human beings. To identify major population expansions related to male lineages, we sequenced 78 East Asian Y chromosomes at 3.9 Mbp of the…
Salamanders (urodela) have among the largest vertebrate genomes, ranging in size from 10 to over 80 pg. The urodela are divided into ten extant families each with a characteristic range in genome size. Although changes in genome size often…
Analyses of a set of 47 fossil and 4 modern skulls using phylogenetic geometric morphometric methods corroborate and refine earlier results. These include evidence that the African Iwo Eleru skull, only about 12,000 years old, indeed…
Divergence time estimation requires the reconciliation of two major sources of data. These are fossil and/or biogeographic evidence that give estimates of the absolute age of nodes (ancestors) and molecular estimates that give us estimates…
Both external environmental selection and internal lower-level evolution are essential for an integral picture of evolution. This paper proposes that the division of internal evolution into DNA/RNA pattern formation (genotype) and protein…
Correlation of gene histories in the human genome determines the patterns of genetic variation (haplotype structure) and is crucial to understanding genetic factors in common diseases. We derive closed analytical expressions for the…