Human Evolution

Primate order?

hominidae (great apes) - family

homininae - subfamily

Hominini - tribe

What does hominini split into?

-humans (genus homo)

-chimpanzees (genus pan)

Who is our closest relative?

chimpanzees

When did we separate from chimpanzees?

previous estimate => 20 mya

molecular data (immunological distance & molecular clock)

=> 5-7 mya

What kind of two genetic similarity/difference is there between us and chimpanzees?

-nucleotide substitutions

-insertion & deletion of DNA

Nucleotide substitutions?

-35M nucleotide substitutions

-60K amino acid differences

-20K protein-coding genes → only 1% of the human genome

Insertions & deletion of DNA?

-5M insertions & deletions

-100M base pairs

-most of them → just a few base pairs

- >1000 → large (>2kb) regions (up to 10M bp)

What is paleontology?

the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the holocene epoch (11.7k yrs before present)

What is geochronology?

the science of determining the age of rocks, fossils and sediments using signatures inherent in the rocks themselves

Radiometric dating?

by measuring the amount of radioactive decay of a radioactive isotope with a known half-life, the absolute age of the parent material can be established

What is paleogenetics?

uses the methods of genetics to study early humans & other ancient populations

Founder of paleogenetics?

svante paabo (max plank)H

How does paleogenetics work?

-extract ancient DNA from bones (e.g. femur)

-sequence genome (toughest jigsaw puzzle)

2006-2010: neanderthal genome project L

Limitation of the neanderthal genome project?

430K year old DNA of homo (march 2016)