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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Were Neanderthals another species of Homo Sapiens?
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2024 14:04:05 -0600
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https://academic.oup.com/evolinnean/advance-article/doi/10.1093/evolinnean/kzae033/7900502?login=false

Open access.

Two anthropologists are making the case that Neanderthals were different 
enough to be considered to be a different species from modern humans.

We could obviously interbreed, but there were physical and genetic 
differences.  We are around as different from Neanderthal in our DNA 
sequence as Bos taurus (western domestic cattle) and Bos indicus (Asian 
domestic castle).  Taurus and indicus can freely interbreed, but the 
Auroch populations that they were derived from had been genetically 
separated for over half a million years.  This is about the same amount 
of time that Neanderthals and Modern humans have been estimated to have 
been separated.

The physical differences are mainly due to Neanderthal having to survive 
multiple 100,000 year long glacial periods.  Neanderthal retain many 
features associated with Homo erectus, but they are more robust with 
much larger nasal openings in their skull.  The overall shape of the 
skull is closer to H. erectus than to modern humans if you factor in the 
increased brain size.  This paper notes that the Neanderthal retained 
the ribs that flare out in H. erectus and apes, but constrict in modern 
humans to give us the hour glass figure instead of the fire hydrant 
build musculature.  Neanderthal internal organs could be larger and 
adapted to do who-knows-what.

Modern humans were eventually more gracile and slighter of build than 
Neanderthals, but Cro-Magnon were very robust individuals that were 
eventually replaced by what currently passes for modern humans.  I 
recall being shocked the first time I saw a comparison of Cro-Magnon, 
Neanderthal and modern human teeth.  Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon teeth 
were comparable in size, but larger than modern human teeth.  Cro-Magnon 
had a cranial capacity about equivalent to Neanderthal, but modern 
humans have less cranial capacity (smaller brains).  So what physical 
differences were really different between modern humans and Neanderthal 
when they first met?

My take is that we should just go by DNA difference, because the other 
measures would be subjective.  We know that we can't go by DNA 
differences in all cases because you have instant speciation in cases 
like tetraploids.  You have cases like arboreal anteaters that were 
thought to be closely related subspecies, but they had DNA differences 
indicating separation for millions of years.  So what can be made of 
phenotypic similarities and differences?

If you claim that different species can still interbreed and exchange 
genetic information you might as well just give up on the species term 
and start identifying populations that are genetically isolated and have 
been for some extended period of time.  You would have to develop some 
quantifiable measure for measuring the amount of genetic exchange that 
may have occurred over the period that the populations were not 
interbreeding on a regular basis, and develop levels of genetic 
isolation that would warrant calling the populations some different 
species name.  You would have some DNA measure to determine when a 
population was different enough from the ancestral population to call it 
something else.  It would likely be some point where loss of the genetic 
information due to extinction would be a major loss of genetic variation 
from the existing related populations that make up the current "specie".

Ron Okimoto