Godless Dave

X2= the movie X-Men 2. Yeah, I cringed when they said that. But maybe they did it on purpose, to set the story in a slightly future Earth or an alternate Earth.

Mashriqi Mercenary

They might not be incorrect. Native Americans show shovel shaped incisors and the only other hominins we know who had that trait were the Homo Erectus.

Mageth

Umm, if I'm not mistaken, shovel-shaped incisors also can be found in many Asian populations and even in relatively large numbers in Sweden.

Mashriqi Mercenary

ill check that, I think you're right on the certain Asiatic populations part. However, as far as my knowledge serves me the earliest anatomically modern humans didnt have shovel shaped incisors, neither did the Neanderthals.....it was a trait characteristic of the H erectus and was principle in catalouging their skeletons found all over the Old World.

ps418

Sundadont dentition patterns are present in Asia, but I wasnt aware that this was present in Sweden too.

Patrick

Mageth

Well, I found only one on-line reference to Sweden, on this page, which doesn't give a source.

Saami (Lapps) are reportedly of 20 to 50% Siberian and 50 to 80% European (Scandinavian) heritage. That might account for occurence of Sundadont dentition patterns there (from the Siberian lineage). Of course, there are also Saami populations in Norway, Finland, and Russia, so "Scandanavia" might have been more accurate than "Sweden".

Gringo

I mentioned this article on a similar thread . It discusses the probability of homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis interbreeding. The problem with these tests that exclude neanderthal DNA is that they are all based on mt DNA. Most mitochondrial lines of Homo sapiens older than 30,000 years has dead ended too, but that doesn't mean that they were not our ancestors. Twenty generations ago, one has more than a million ancestors, but only one woman on that generational level carried his or her mt DNA. We might be able to rule out an "umbilical" line of descent from Neandethals, but we cannot rule them out as ancestors all together. Future research in nuclear DNA may find that they share a spot in our ancestry, but it can never rule it out, even if it wasn't so, because the interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, if it happened, was small.

Spaz

Lol, no it doesn't really matter, I was being sarcastic, I just wanted to know if what they said had any merit.

NeilUnreal

To Nic Tamzek: I got a Master's in climatology from the Geography department at UGA in the 1980's, and did PhD work there in biogeography (before changing majors).

Some of the faculty I went there to work with have since left, but when I went there it was considered an A-level place to study bioclimatology in the southeast. How much has changed since then, I couldn't say.

My roomate when I was there got his PhD in biogeography -- I know population genetics was part of his study. Hes now a prof. at Georgia St. I was more into energy-balance and computer modeling stuff so I skipped genetics.

As for environment, Athens is a great town. Of course my vision is somewhat tinted by having lived there through the heyday of the Athens new wave scene.

-Neil

RufusAtticus

Avise is great, but I wouldn't recomend you look towards him. He is notorious for having a large number of exceptional students intrested in him, but not giving them the time of day. He is also in the process of retiring from having students. (He would have not taken any this year, but his current student didn't want to be the last and convinced him to take more.) If you're interested in doing something geography related in the Genetics Department you might want to look at Jim Hamrick's work.

In fact one geography prof, Kathy Parker, has worked with people in my department and is actually on an in house sabatical this year and has been sitting in on most of the pop-gen courses. I recommend you look at her work.

Athens is a great place to work and the university is an excellent research institution, especially in the life sciences.