[Taxacom] Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

[Curtis Clark]

On 2013-05-19 12:42 PM, Ken Kinman wrote:
> Although most of today's populations have only about 2-4% Neanderthal 
> genes, that percentage was probably much higher while Neanderthals 
> were still around and gradually decreased over time. 

What mechanism do you propose? Increased back-crossing to modern humans? 
Selection against intermediate phenotypes? Subsequent influx of 
additional modern humans? Higher reproductive rate of modern humans 
leading to exaggerated differences in population sizes? Any of these 
seem reasonable, and all are at least theoretically testable, although 
the paucity of fossil evidence makes testing difficult. But the bottom 
line is that no had-waving is needed.

-- 
Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768