Guest parnassus Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) I´m rather baffled by the header: "A New Species of Contemporary Feral Homo sapiens" on the copyright page, from a scientist. I mean Homo sapiens is a species! if this entity is another species - then it´s not Homo sapiens! in other words, you are correct. There can be no new species of Homo sapiens. And you are not alone in being baffled by the stuff that comes out of the Ketchum/Paulides (or is it Paulides/Ketchum) camp. For example, the entire concept that modern human DNA is something to get excited about in this context, or even write a paper about, not because it is bizarre or a hybrid or anything out of the ordinary, but rather, simply because it was sent in to a laboratory by a bigfoot believer. There are 7 billion of us modern humans on the planet, and our DNA is (almost) everywhere, and always readily at hand, should someone want to send it in to a laboratory. But even more interesting is that some people will take the claim seriously, looking up the possible influences of this or that gene or the frequency of this or that polymorphism to try to make a bigfoot out of what is actually, say, a 45 year old schoolteacher from Puyallup, out for a camping trip, who brushed her hair and cleaned out the hairbrush in the woods; or a hoaxer; when the result is right in front of a person, saying M-O-D-E-R-N H-U-M-A-N. It's like, the emperor's new clothes. Edited January 27, 2012 by parnassus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spurfoot Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 All the puzzled people need to think outside the box. All will become clear when Ketchum's paper is published. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 The newest copyright replaces the other and moves away from usage of Homo sapiens. It seems pointless to discuss Feral Human or Feral Homo sapiens when the paper now says New Hominin. I would think everyone would be happy with it having a completely seperate species classification. Of course hopefully really soon. Happy Friday-Eve everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mitchw Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Parn, in re your post #1771, I keep in mind that there is a tenuous semiotic relationship between the words people may use to describe the results, which are the basis of the Ketchum Paper, and the actual DNA sequences, both nuclear and mitochondrial, that will serve as the identity of the subjects theorized to be Sasquatches. If those sequences are novel and uncatalogued it won't be so easy to say all Ketchum has is "Alice from the beer hall." If the sequences are also empirically associated with hair, bones, or photos, then the skeptics task gets even harder. Personally, I am persuaded that Sasquatch is real, but I honestly value strong critiques. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) What if the provenance is proven in the majority of the subjects,maybe due to Ericksons influence and money,and the samples we hear of coming from the Bigfoot community are just supportive in that they carry the same mutations or evolutionary development? Or is that kind of support not allowed? I am just asking hypothetically,we really don't know,at least I don't. Edited January 27, 2012 by JohnC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mitchw Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) What I'm trying to say is that our arguments need to be founded upon the actual sequences rather than words. DNA is molecules, and the arguments over the identity of Sasquatch begin there, not with a recent copyright or the ambiguities of human language. Edited January 27, 2012 by mitchw 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 There can be no new species of Homo sapiens. Why not? The reasoning seems circular, since you can't prove that negative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuyInIndiana Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 If they are a tribe of people just like us- humans- where do all the previous facts and accounts fit in? Such as ---> -mid tarsal break -enormous size, 9 ft and 700 lbs -howls outside of a human range of frequency -coned head -ny baby footage where one is swinging around like an ape -eating only a deer liver -ability to tolerate extreme temps where humans would get hypothermia -arms hanging down past the knees All that we supposedly have learned about them does not make sense. It may be because we've been accepting things as 'previous facts' that are in fact, not fact. The more rational answer would be that they simply AREN'T a *tribe of people* like humans. Just because certain groups want it to be true doesn't make it so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) As my avatar indicates, I am a fan of Ernst Mayr and, by extension, the explanatory power of his "biological species concept." To my knowledge, the available evidence suggests rather easy gene flow between Neanderthals and our own ancestors. Therefore, the two organisms were not reproductively isolated and should be considered variants of the same species, i.e., different subspecies. Saskeptic, you are obviously much more knowledgeable on this issue that I am. It is my understanding that there is some gene flow between early humans and chimpanzees and that it may be possible for a human and chimpanzee to produce an off spring. Would chimps and humans be variants of the same speicies? What about chimps and bonabos? I have to admit I thought your avatar was Einstein. I am going to have to look up Ernst Mayr. Edited January 27, 2012 by bigfootnis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wudewasa Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) The idea of a "feral" human is something that people seem to have different ideas of. While individual humans have been documented in confined, isolated states or living with animals, there have been to my knowledge no scientifically recorded reproductive human population that fits the term "feral.". The following is a list of links to accounts of "feral" children. http://www.dmoz.org/...Feral_Children/ Entertaining the idea of feral humans: there would have to exist a domesticated population as well. Certainly the recent inventions of the last several hundred years have radically altered most of the lifestyles of humans living in the developed world. Are some of us evolving into a different subspecies due to habitat alterations and lessening caloric constraints? The grazing areas of fast food chains and fluorescently lit foraging habitats of big box stores offer respite from the harsh climes of our planet, producing humans of epic size and morphological deviation from ancestral lines. Case in point: Edited January 27, 2012 by wudewasa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Wudewasa, you have just proven what I have always expected. Yes, I am indeed at the top of the evolutionary line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wudewasa Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) It is my understanding that there is some gene flow between early humans and chimpanzees and that it may be possible for a human and chimpanzee to produce an off spring. Would chimps and humans be variants of the same speicies? What about chimps and bonabos? Chromosomal differences between humans and other closely related species would be an example of reproductive isolating mechanisms. Edited January 27, 2012 by wudewasa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jodie Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Well first, no combination of human and chimp can occur without artificial insemination since the sperm can not penetrate the egg. It would have to be forced. That's true for any great ape and human. Second, I always thought bigfoot would be something different altogether. Not human, not a relic homind, not anything we have ever seen before. If there is truth that this creature is as close as it is rumored to be, they will be hard pressed to convince anyone outside the bigfoot community that this isn't anything other than a regular human. Third,GenBank does not have every human on profile but they do have most of the different populations cataloged in bits and pieces depending on what file it is stored in and what segment of the sequence it is. To prove this creature is something unique the whole thing had to be sequenced from what I understand. So I'm assuming that they compared the segments most likely to show mutations with what was already cataloged in those particular files in the database. I'm assuming when the rumor says 90% human that they mean that 90% of what they compared of the different segments matched human, well what did the other 10% look like? That's the more interesting question to me and the one everyone ought to be asking IMO, should any of this speculation be even remotely correct. Considering all the stuff going on right now, I doubt it's anything. I mean seriously, who in their right mind would forget to update the description of their copyright before it got published? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MikeG Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 I think we've got to treat this 90% thing as some sort of scientific illiteracy in the people who have passed it on. It means nothing. Just as an example of this, those tiny little fruit flies which hover above your wind-fall apples share 60% of their genes with us. Would Smedja call fruit flies 60% human? Would anyone? Chimps share 98% of our genes. Does this mean that sasquatch is far less human than a chimp? Again, this is a bit of nonsensical misunderstanding of the science. The only way a percentage such as this can have any meaning is if it is used in the context of "distance" between us and a common ancestor. As we (as in those of us who haven't seen the results of the study) have no idea what the common ancestor is, the figure of 10% of the way towards it is utterly, utterly irrelevant, even ridiculous. Just to add to this litany of comparative genomics, we apparently share 85% of our genes with mice. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimB Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Right now it's all speculation. That's why people feel comfortable stating their opinion as fact- there are no actual facts to show that they are wrong. I'm fine waiting instead of arguing. Tim B. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts