Patagonian monsters: April 2016

A post that I wrote in July 2014 regarding the Loss of Amerindian genetic diversity post 1492, has now more evidence to support it, as shown by a paper by Bastien Llama et al., Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas Science Advances 01 Apr 2016:Vol. 2, no. 4, e1501385, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501385.

The paper states that "As a result, our ancient mitochondrial data suggest that European colonization was followed by local mass mortality and extinction of lineages associated with major population centers of the pre-Columbian past. Our results contrast with previous observations that Native American genetic diversity has been temporally and geographically stable for at least the past 2000 years".

And has some interesting graphs showing the loss of lineages.

I disagree with the timeline and the Beringian standstill notion, but I must admit it is an interesting paper.

The following image, from the paper, shows the magnitude of this loss of diversity, but the magnitude is surely bigger as the sampling of archaic genomes is quite small: the paper only includes one (1) sample from the US and Canada, one from Northern Mexico (none from Yucatan or Central America, Venezuela, Guyanas, Colombia, Ecuador,Brazil, Southern Chile, Paraguay or Uruguay, and only 2 from Argentina, excluding Patagonia... (see Fig. S1 in the paper)

Fig. S6 in the Supplementary Materials of the paper. The Red lineages are extinct, the blue ones have survived. (this is one of 3 simulations in the Fig. all three are very similar.

Our April 2016 Award for Stupid theories goes to this Creationist, proclaimed "researcher", Emmanuel Fortes.

The Institute of Creationist Biology (if such a thing can exist), located in Barcelona, Spain has claimed that our ancestor, Homo erectus had gay inclinations which led it to extinction.

They state that "new archeological evidence emerging from the Palau Pe Dang site in Indonesia [shows that] these ancestors of modern humans possibly favored interbreeding with their own gender, leading to a steep decline of their population".

What led these "scientists" to come to such ridiculous conclusions is still being debated. Perhaps they found the remains of coupling Homo erectus, or was it the "homo" part of their scientific name that led them to conclude they were "homosexual"?.

Of course we are interested in the creationist biology, how do they explain the origin of the "creator"? What proof do they have to uphold such "scientific" theories?. Did they find erectus remains in the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah

Hint Genesis 1:

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Of course plants appeared on day three before day and night were created on day four and the sun too. How is this explained by "Creationist science", perhaps a miracle kept the plants alive before sunlight began fuelling their clorophyl production....

The article I have read says that "DNA studies done on LGBT community members worldwide clearly show the remnants of the Homo erectus DNA in much stronger percentiles than in heterosexual groups, a fact mainstream scientists dismiss as pseudo-science, but the numbers are there for everyone to see" this was said by the Assistant Director of the Creation Science Museum, in Salt Lake City, Utah, a Mormon community.

Maybe the May 2016 award will be given to this Assistant Director...

How can such silly ideas survive in the XXIst century?

Paraphrasing Jesus, (Luke 20:25), "Then give back to Science what belongs to Science, and to God what is God's." In other words religion is nice and soothes people's anxieties when facing difficult situations and the uncertainty of death, but leave it to science to explain how the universe works.

Read the article here

Patagonian monsters

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Sunday, April 17, 2016

More on the loss of genetic diversity in the Americas after European discovery

The Award for idiotic ideas goes to this Creationist