Pigeons and Dogs: Micro or Macro evolution?

Hi Robert,Just as a point of clarification: If you re-read the two abstracts, you'll see that nowhere is any mention of age, either relative or absolute. They are simply comparing two DNA patterns and discovering that H. neanderthalensis mitochondrial DNA contains sequences that are NOT FOUND in H. sapiens. Not just different karyotypes, as could be found between two subpopulations of the same species, but completely different sequences. IOW, based on the studies, (and the larger sample size in the second study is more significant), the DNA sequences come from separate species. Has nothing to do with age at all.Nuclear DNA is changeable to a greater or lesser extent, mtDNA is often much more conserved, which is why it is used in this type of study. You might have an argument if the comparison was nuclear DNA. Since it's mtDNA they're comparing, the differences are more likely to be significant.

Well, I've read a fair amount of literature, and if the two papers Mammuthus abstracted follow the standard procedures, the authors have also published a supplement containing all the original sequence data on which they base their conclusions. All you need to do is compare the sequences yourself and see if they are the same.If they're not, there's two possibilities: if the sequences differ only a bit, you might be looking at two haplotypes of the same species. However, if there are significant bits that are found in one specimen and not another, you've got evidence that they may not be the same species. And if you get a number of specimens of each type and the same differences appear each and every time, then your evidence that they're different species is much stronger.Finally, for your specific point that neanderthalensis may be simply an early version of some Indo-European, the easy way to make the determination would be to sequence known sapiens mtDNA from the region and compare it to your putative "ancient Germans". That's pretty much what they did in the second referenced article (although I won't claim any regional affiliation, the H. s. "type" specimen, including the ones used in the human genome project, is Indo-European). So since there's significant differences in mtDNA (not in the much more variable nuclear DNA, which was not studied AFAIK), with a fair number of specimens, it is a quite reasonable conclusion that the sequences represent different species. I'd be very interested to know your source for this. Given the various colonization/migration waves that wandered through northern Europe over the ages, determining what someone spoke a long time ago in that region is a bit problematic IMO. Especially since Basque appears to be unrelated to German OR Celt (do you mean Pict?).

Oh bloody heck. Happens every time. I go away for a day and the person I'm talking to either leaves, gets banned, or finds themselves restricted so they can't reply. Sigh.