Discovery News reports: An African-American man in South Carolina has lineage tracing back 338,000 years, according to a new study. The unidentified man’s Y chromosomes — a hereditary factor determining male gender — has a history so old that it predates the age of the oldest known h**o sapiens fossils, according to the report published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The scientists were then able to estimate the emergence of the chromosome mutation based on rates of change, creating a sort of “family tree” for the chromosome. The discovery doesn’t necessarily mean that all humans descended from an ancestor living in western Cameroon. “It is a misconception that the genealogy of a single genetic region reflects population divergence,” Hammer explained. “Instead, our results suggest that there are pockets of genetically isolated communities that together preserve a great deal of human diversity.” Hammer added that still “It is likely that other divergent lineages will be found, whether in Africa or among African-Americans in the U.S. and that some of these may further increase the age of the Y chromosome tree. FOR MORE INFORMATION cosmiclog.nbcnews/_news/2013/03/05/17199580-african-americans-y-chromosome-sparks-shift-in-evolutionary-timetable cell/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(13)00073-6
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 12:12:50 +0000
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