Fossil ape hints at how walking on two feet evolved

Modern Humans Inherited Even More DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans Than We Thought

The Clitoris is not a button, it is an iceberg

Perk up your usual Monday morning 

250-million-year-old evolutionary remnants seen in muscles of human embryos

The latest findings, from a June 3-16 Gallup poll, have not changed significantly from the last reading in 2017. However, the 22% of Americans today who do not believe God had any role in human evolution marks a record high dating back to 1982. This figure has changed more than the other two have over the years and coincides with an increasing number of Americans saying they have no religious identification.

As many as 47% and as few as 38% of Americans have taken a creationist view of human origins throughout Gallup's 37-year trend. Likewise, between 31% and 40% of U.S. adults have attributed humans' development to a combination of evolution and divine intervention over the same period.

The Dinosaur That Started a Craze
The story of the fossil formerly known as Scrotum humanum.

Move over, DNA: ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity’s history

Closest-known ancestor of today’s Native Americans found in Siberia

Indigenous Americans, who include Alaska Natives, Canadian First Nations, and Native Americans, descend from humans who crossed an ancient land bridge connecting Siberia in Russia to Alaska tens of thousands of years ago. But scientists are unclear when and where these early migrants moved from place to place. Two new studies shed light on this mystery and uncover the most closely related Native American ancestor outside North America.

Billion-year-old fossils set back evolution of earliest fungi

 R_P wrote: 
You are underestimating pure physical attraction and ancient echoes of the strong male provider who fights for the tribe and is a protector.  At the beginning of relationships, the physical and chemical component is the driving factor.  In healthy long term relationships, the focus turns to friendship, compatibility, shared values and character.   Naturally you would assume there are no positive aspects for those males who still exhibit those qualities and deem it pure derogatory and irrational for any woman to be attracted to one such as this.  Now, there are also many women who find serial killers attractive, but I do believe that is a different discussion.....

 R_P wrote: 

hmmm...

i have 280 neanderthal variants

which is more than most people

probably explains a lot

i have no earthly inertly idea what my mate sees in me   

What Do We Really Know About Neanderthals?
Revolutionary discoveries in archaeology show that the species long maligned as knuckle-dragging brutes deserve a new place in the human story

New species of ancient human discovered in Philippines cave
Homo luzonensis fossils found in Luzon island cave, dating back up to 67,000 years

A new species of ancient human, thought to have been under 4ft tall and adapted to climbing trees, has been discovered in the Philippines, providing a twist in the story of human evolution.

The specimen, named Homo luzonensis, was excavated from Callao cave on Luzon island in the northern Philippines and has been dated to 50,000-67,000 years ago – when our own ancestors and the Neanderthals were spreading across Europe and into Asia.

Florent Détroit, of the Natural History Museum in Paris and the paper’s first author, said the discovery provided the latest challenge to the fairly straightforward prevalent narrative of human evolution.

It was once thought that no humans left Africa until about 1.5 million years ago, when a large-bodied ancient human called Homo erectus set off on a dispersal that ultimately allowed it to occupy territory spanning Africa and Spain, China and Indonesia.

Then, according to the traditional narrative, after a few hundred-thousand years of not much happening, our own ancestors dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago.

“We now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions,” said Détroit. “Homo luzonensis is one of those species and we will (increasingly see) that a few thousand years back in time, Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth.” (...)

Nature

Humans Are Still Mating with Neandertals
A Valentine’s Day meditation on why bright women sometimes gravitate to not-so-bright men

(...) But sometimes women marry up (the lady Neandertal bedding H. sapiens), and sometimes women marry down (the “wise one” female falling in love with the Neandertal). Psychologists have terms for this behavior of selecting mates outside one’s own group: “hypergamy” and “hypogamy,” for marrying up or down, respectively, but as with most technical jargon, the scholarly vocab contributes little. The question is, why do women do it?

We needn’t dwell on marrying up—gold digging everyone understands—but marrying down is another matter. What do women see in the dumb but lovable Neandertals they pick today and in the prehistoric mating game 100,000 years ago? This question is especially important now, because women are making the Neandertal choice more now than ever, and the trends are likely to continue into the future. (...)

Viewpoint: Why we still underestimate the Neanderthals

 R_P wrote:
 

That's pretty funny.

Scott's Neanderthal variants: 309. I'm in the 92nd percentile of 23&me customers. (Down from 96th percentile when I first signed in, so they've had a lot of cavemen sign up or something.)

Fossils discovered at B.C.'s Burgess Shale add branch to tree of life

And this was it — the thing that sold me on 23andMe: the chance to determine one’s degree of Neanderthal-ness. Without any consideration of all the possible consequences of submitting one’s DNA to a global database, I ordered two kits, grinning and convinced that my husband’s result would show a statistically significant and above average number of Neanderthal variants in his genome. Since Father’s Day was only a month away, I decided I’d giftwrap the kits upon arrival too. I’d kill two birds with one stone.

When I hit the Confirm Order button on 23andMe’s site, the possibility of any additional genetic discoveries beyond Tomer’s Neanderthal-ness didn’t even occur to me. My brain was seated at the kitchen table, staring at an unused fork, thinking only of how hairy my husband was and that my father-in-law had recently grown even hairier in his senior years — small gray bushes now sprung from his ears and nostrils. I counted hairs. I equated higher hair counts with higher degrees of Neanderthal-ness. And worse, I worried my husband was destined to suffer future hearing loss, just as his father does, and I wondered if these auditory challenges could be blamed on something neurological or on those furry, sound-absorbing, hair-stuffed ears.

I waited patiently and quietly for the kits to arrive, but my curiosity about everything related to genetics expanded in the meantime. I wanted so much to share my excitement with Tomer; admittedly, I also walked around filled with a kind of juvenile yet sadistic glee, and whenever Tomer licked his fingers or spoke with his mouth full of steak, I thought to myself What a Neanderthal!