The Ketchum Report

[Guest King Kong]

According to the radio interview she says that she has samples from Asia. They aren't in the study but she sounded like the evidence was that they were related. That might explain the Russian involvement and why she was pushing the Asian origin of the hybridization event.

You wouldn't need the whole genome to see if it is in that haplogroup so that would be 109 mitochondrial sequences. She didn't specifically say they were all in that haplogroup but it seemed like she implied it. It depends what she meant by consistent. She may have just meant that they were human. Without them being in that haplogroup they are just human so I don't see how they would contribute to the study.

Radio show interview AM770

Interviewer: "By the way were the samples consistent?"

Melba: "We have a 109 samples in the study and they all gave us the human mito component."

And multiple labs did the testing: private labs, Forensic labs and Government labs did testing. Kind of gives the impression that they came back with the same answers.

[Guest slimwitless]

I went and looked at Stubstad's site and found this. He's referring to a third sample that didn't match the two sharing a mitochondrial Eve. But...I don't think we know for sure whether the third sample is actually in the study. One of the two matching samples (the toenail) was later confirmed by Sally Ramey as being in the study. I'm not sure about the other one. He mentions the 15,000 year date so I guess that finding never changed.

While yet another sasquatch turned out to be – just barely – within human ranges, the mitochondrial sequencing didn’t even come close to resembling either Sample

1 or 2, which as stated previously, were both of sub-glacial European origin with a common mitochondrial Eve who lived in the region some 15,000 years or more ago

(likely range: 10,000 - 30,000 years)—see Attachment 1. 1)

Edited December 11, 2012 by slimwitless

[Guest Theagenes]

And if all twenty don't point to the same Eve?

I don't think Stubstad thought they did. I need to go back and look.

I think if you have two or three human "Eves" it can still work but becomes less plausible as it suggests a higher success rate for hybrid pregnancies. I guess you suggest that there was a group of humans and a group of BF-like hominins living in close contact, maybe even exchanging females/brides in order to establish social ties for a few generations. That way a couple of human "Eve's" could work their DNA into the BF line, but the bottom line is you need to have all of the female BFs that make it into N. America having modern human mtDNA, whether from one Eve or half dozen Eves. Otherwise there's no way to explain two dozen samples from all over the country all having modern human mtDNA---that would just be too much of a coincidence.

Quick question on the lice.

Are lice strictly a human/ape parasite?

No i think all mammals have lice, but each mammal species have their own species of lice. Humans though, have three: head lice (which has 3 subspecies), body lice (which lives in clothes), and pubic lice (which is the same species as gorilla pubic lice--yep).

[Guest VioletX]

I wonder if the original unknown saved itself from extinction by this collaboration, maybe that was the intent?

[BobZenor]

Quick question on the lice.

Are lice strictly a human/ape parasite?

http://www.innovatio...icht-34347.html

The new study confirmed several events in primate and human evolution. The researchers found chimp lice and human lice diverged roughly 5.6 million years ago, consistent with previous evidence that chimps and human ancestors diverged from a common ancestor about 5.5 million years ago.

They tend to not jump species. They are very widespread in parasitizing mammals and birds. We have our own specific lice and other mammals and birds have theirs.

It is hard to see how they don't get transmitted when some hunter bags a lousy game animal. For them to last that long on specific host there must be some mechanism to maintain them only on that species. Chimps eat colobus monkeys for example. You would think in 5.5 million years some of their lice would get transmitted to chimps. They even did a genetic study of the colobus lice. According to the article only about a fifth of mammal species have lice. Fussy eaters them lice. It makes no sense to me why more species wouldn't have lice.

http://www.google.co...u6W2v4AfWk8dvlA

[Guest]

I'm starting to get itchy.

[Guest slimwitless]

Humans though, have three: head lice (which has 3 subspecies), body lice (which lives in clothes), and pubic lice (which is the same species as gorilla pubic lice--yep).

Uh, do I have to be a genetics expert to figure out how that last detail came to be?

[Guest VioletX]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-gorilla-lice.html

[Guest thermalman]

Ahem......and AIDS, I think?

Edited December 11, 2012 by thermalman

[Guest BFSleuth]

Methinks this part of the discussion is better served in the Tar Pit.... .... no need to get ourselves afoul of the forum rules in the General Forum.

I must say that I'd never anticipated I'd be so fascinated by lice....

Edited December 11, 2012 by BFSleuth

[Guest VioletX]

The new motto here:

The Bigfoot Forum: We discuss lice!

(catchy huh?) ; D

[Guest Theagenes]

Okay I'll avoid any lice-ntious discussion of gorillas and humans.

What do I need to get in on this tarpit? Fifty more posts and twenty bucks?

So BobZenor and slimwitless posted a couple of interesting things. She seems to be interested in an Asian haplogroup, which would fit with the hypothetical model I gave earlier. But Stubstad indicated early on that the mtDNA had a European origin. That last is a little more difficult to explain.

[Guest]

A bundle of recent genetic studies have suggested modern humans had sex with Neanderthals thousands of years ago when the two populations roamed the planet alongside each other. However, the bones left behind by the two species don't bear any obvious traces of interbreeding, and a new study of monkeys in Mexico shows why we shouldn't expect them to.

Researchers examined blood samples, hair samples and measurements collected from mantled howler monkeys and black howler monkeys that were live-captured and released in Mexico and Guatemala between 1998 and 2008. The two monkey species splintered off from a common ancestor about 3 million years ago; today they live in mostly separate habitats, except for a "hybrid zone" in the state of Tabasco in southeastern Mexico, where they coexist and interbreed.

Through an analysis of genetic markers, from both mitochondrial DNA (the DNA in the cells' energy-making structures that gets passed down by mothers) and nuclear DNA, the researchers identified 128 hybrid individuals that were likely the product of several generations of interbreeding. Even so, these hybrids shared most of their genome with either one of the two species and were physically indistinguishable from the pure individuals of that species, the team found.

"The implications of these results are that physical features are not always reliable for identifying individuals of hybrid ancestry," Liliana Cortés-Ortiz, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "Therefore, it is possible that hybridization has been underestimated in the human fossil record."

The work on howler monkeys was part of the doctoral dissertation of Mary Kelaita, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Kelaita added that the study "suggests that the lack of strong evidence for hybridization in the fossil record does not negate the role it could have played in shaping early human lineage diversity."

* * *

More at

http://www.livescien...erbreeding.html

(And, on whether Neanderthals and (non-African) homo sapiens interbred, the growing consensus is that they did:

http://blogs.nature....ublication.html )

Edited December 11, 2012 by Oak

[Guest slimwitless]

Andrian Erickson claims in a recent website update they were suspicious because their pre-Ketchum testing at other labs kept coming back "Eastern European". No mention of haplogroup, of course. Assuming that's true, it means someone pre-Stubstad suspected a human component to BF. If it is the same haplogroup and mitochondrial Eve as the other samples, then that's pretty revealing (although apparently more problematic).

[BobZenor]

Okay I'll avoid any lice-ntious discussion of gorillas and humans.

What do I need to get in on this tarpit? Fifty more posts and twenty bucks?

So BobZenor and slimwitless posted a couple of interesting things. She seems to be interested in an Asian haplogroup, which would fit with the hypothetical model I gave earlier. But Stubstad indicated early on that the mtDNA had a European origin. That last is a little more difficult to explain.

It was that rumor from Stubstad, at least partially verified, that made me think it was European. He said something to the effect that the haplogroup was centered in Iberia and southern France. I thought she might be trying to push it east to get it closer to the land bridge. If she also has Asian DNA that sort of cancels my suspicions. There is no reason bigfoot couldn't go back to Asia but it makes America as the site of the hybridization event less likely.