lpetrich

But are the Basques really very genetically different from most other southwestern Europeans? They may have less admixture from Neolithic and later migrations in Europe, but I've never seen any claims of unusual genetic distance. Simply check on what's been done with mitochondria and Y chromosomes.

Also, Basque is the only non-Indo-European survivor in southern and western Europe; there were several others in ancient times, like Pictish, Aquitanian, Iberian, Etruscan, Lemnian, "Pelasgian", etc. Not much survives on them, sometimes inscriptions with inadequate context, and sometimes only personal and place names.

I note in passing that IE does not always "win"; in the Middle Ages, IE lost to the language of the nomads who settled in what is now Hungary, and as Turkic nomads spread from central Asia to Anatolia, IE languages lost to Turkic ones.

Viti

I recall reading that Bonobos and Chimpazees are separate subspecies of the same species...can they interbreed and have fertile offspring? If so, is their separation geographical (is that a word) rather than bilological?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, just trying to wrap my mind around the subspecies

cheetah

Bonobos and commons are actually different species (Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes). Off the top of my head, I don't know about them interbreeding, but this thread has caused me confusion about subspecies and species, too. I guess that's something I can do with my time.

cheetah

Whoa!

This post is about all apes interbreeding!

It confirms that bonobos and chimpanzees can interbreed. That's just the first one I found...

I also found that the two chimps are allopatric: living in different geographic areas.

Gracchus

I remember reading somewhere that chimps and gorillas are found north of the Congo river and bonobos are found only south of the river. The species apparently differentiated by genetic drift.

Minnesota

The new classification of the domestic dog as Canis lupis familiaris was formalized in 1993 by the American Society of Mammalogists, and has NOT been adopted or even recognized by all mammalogist. Dispute still remains over this reclassification, which means it is, at best, a provisional one--time will tell. And the wolf has been split into two subspecies C. l. nubilus and C. l. occidentalis.

And, it must be noted that Mayr has since redefined "species," which he now considers to be a "reproductively isolated aggregate of populations which can interbreed with one another because they share the same isolating mechanisms."

Also, while on the subject of interbreeding canines, note that the wolf C. l. spp. and the coyote C. latrans have successfully interbred for ages, as have coyotes and domestic dogs.

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Chimp/Bonobo interbreeding ( http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200202/0017.html )


". . .before and even after the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos became known,they had been mixed together in zoo cages. Some of them readily mated with each other and produced hybrid offspring. The handful of these hybrids that we know about seem to be
healthy, and there is no reason to suppose that they would be unable to have babies of their own. As with the hybrid orangs, however, it is unclear how well they might do if they were reintroduced into the wild, or whether subsequent generations will continue to be normal."

Arken

This new thread in Science & Skepticism throws a whole lot of new fuel on the fire of the different species can or cannot interbreed debate.