Darwin-L Message Log 7:45 (March 1994)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<7:45>From sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu  Wed Mar 16 11:04:21 1994

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 12:00:58 -0500
From: sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Humanoid fossils in Time

There are two points to keep in mind, in respect to Homo erectus:

1) The genomic difference between modern Homo sapiens and modern
Chimps is about 2%.  Given that the most recent common ancestor of
these two species lived 5 million years ago minimum, the difference
between the genomes of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is likely to be
quite small indeed.

2) Homo erectus is a paleospecies.  Simpson long ago pointed out that
this does not equate to actual determination that the population is
or was reproductively isolated from other paleospecies or from modern
species.

spencer turkel
department of life sciences
new york institute of technology
sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu

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