What Is A Bigfoot?

[Guest]

I think there is still some debate about whether Neanderthal co-mingled. There are some questions of the interpretation of the DNA analysis but if they did contribute, it was only in certain combinations that allowed fertile offspring. There are some questions about the dating of Neanderthal remains also that put the hybrid hypothesis in question. Here are some links:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-neanderthals-died-earlier-believed.html

Here is the article with a synopsis on genetic compatibility

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/04/neandertal-hybridization-haldanes-rule/

Here is an excerpt from the original paper that I downloaded. I will link where I accessed the download but if it doesn't work you can google it:

http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/index.php/main/article/download/215/pdf_1

A third scenario,

which is consistent with our knowledge

of interspecific hybridity, is that female

Neanderthals were incapable of producing

fertile offspring with male humans.

The suggestion that Neanderthals practiced

patrilocal mating behavior (30) becomes

more nuanced in the light of data indicating

that the contribution of nuclear DNA from

Neanderthals to humans came uniquely

from male Neanderthals. The idea that

Neanderthals and humans were able to interbreed

is not new (31), but the most recent

data, coupled with an understanding of interspecific

hybridity, allows us to conjecture that

only male Neanderthals were able to mate

with female humans.

If Haldane’s Law applies to the progeny of

Neanderthals and humans then female hybrids

would have been much commoner than

male hybrids. Interbreeding between male

Neanderthals and female humans accounts

for the presence of Neanderthal nuclear

DNA, the scarcity of Neanderthal Y-linked

genes, and the lack of Neanderthal mtDNA in

modern human populations. Thus, gene flow

from Neanderthals to humans was the product

of male Neanderthals mating with female

humans to produce fertile female hybrids.

[Guest WesT]

Thanks for the links Jodie. Very interesting. Yeah it makes more sense there would be a hybrid from a male Neaderthal and female human. Being a man I know how we operate, we like a visual.. So from that perspecive, I can see why Human males didn't interbreed with Neanderthal women. We didn't find them attractive.

Gibbons are apes that produce hybrids in nature and in captivity and are in a state of evolving very quickly. My point here being, primate species that have a relatively recent common ancestor are able to hybridize with greater success.

There's an intersting video I watched at the bottom of the page from the second link. The reason I found it interesting is because I'm friends with someone who had a close encounter with something in the foothills of the Jefferson National Forest here in Virginia. And he got a real good look at it in broad daylight. When he went to the library, to see if he could identify what he encountered, the closest thing he could find in the books there (of what it looked like) was a pic of a Neanderthal.

[Guest Po Commander]

I chose 'other'. A Bigfoot is a human in a costume, or a misidentified bear/large mammal. Until there is any proof whatsoever, I'm going to have to assume the worst of it's existence.

[Guest vilnoori]

Looking at the above image, I think that our North American sasquatches are probably that middle arm of very large, robust, tool-poor Homo erectus, reaching up to present day instead of extinct like the graph portrays, that Almas might be Neanderthals, and it is also possible that the little people seen in Southeast Asia could be populations related Homo floresiensis. I still haven't seen or understood what distinguishes H. floresiensis from Homo habilis, both were very small people, though of course habilines were African and very early, merging in the early days out of Australopithecines. We really have no idea how well each of these species (if they were separate species) could interbreed or even if the VERY small sample of fossils we have are representative of a single species with a lot of variability (especially given the big gaps of time between them).

[Guest DWA]

We may not classify this an ape, at least not on the same branch of the primate family tree as existing ones (even though mountain gorilla shows up a surprising amount in discussions of potential affinities).

 

My candidates among known possibilities:

 

1.  Robust australopithecines

2. Dryopithecines

3.  Gigantopithecus

 

That's in rough order; dryopithecines have turned up across a surprisingly broad range. The absence of robust australopithecines from fossil records anywhere other than Africa is just fossils doing what fossils do. (Us doing what we do, rarely finding them.) It has no bearing on what sasquatch might be; morphological resemblances and how those might have evolved in radiation to the temperate zone fuel my opinion.

 

Really, I might not even put Giganto on here, except two seemed kinda thin. :-D That's a simple case of right - sort of - fossil, right place, but what is speculated about Giganto doesn't make me too supportive.

 

I'm placing a significant side bet that we have not found fossils for any sasquatch ancestor yet, particularly since the NA primate record leaves open, through simple parsimony, the possibility that sasquatch might have evolved here.

 

 

 

 

[FarArcher]

And I say it's a caveman.  No idea which one.

[Rockape]

1 hour ago, FarArcher said:

And I say it's a caveman.  No idea which one.

 

 

Fred Flintstone.

[FarArcher]

1 hour ago, Rockape said:

 

 

Fred Flintstone.

 

Naw, it was really butt ugly, and no Barney in sight.