Creation Moment 6/27/2015 - Neanderthal genes in a modern human skeleton is not what they had predicted

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Romans 1:22

"The headline reads: “Early modern humans interbred with Neanderthals: An early European had a close Neanderthal ancestor.”

DNA from a jawbone discovered in a Romanian cave has been sequenced. Finding 8 to 11 percent of Neanderthal DNA in this individual’s genome means that it had a Neanderthal ancestor as near as its great-great-grandparent. This strengthens the case that Neanderthals and modern humans are members of the same species. They produced fertile offspring, not sterile hybrids. Evidence for interbreeding between the two human “species” (Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis) now comes from a wide area stretching from western Siberia to Romania.

Here are some reactions from evolutionary anthropologists, as reported in the secular media: “I could hardly believe it when we first saw the results” — Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute

for Evolutionary Anthropology ... “The data from the jawbone imply that humans mixed with Neanderthals not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well.” (Ibid.) / “It’s an incredibly unexpected thing,” said Prof David Reich, a co-author of the paper from the Harvard Medical School. (BBC News) / "The large spans of Neanderthal-like segments in Oase 1’s genome indicate that one of his human ancestors interbred with a Neanderthal less than 200 years before he lived. (Live Science) In the past decade, the analysis of ancient DNA from fossil skeletons of anatomically modern humans has revealed a startling fact: some of our direct ancestors had sex with Neanderthals, producing fertile offspring. Prior to these genetic revelations, anthropological researchers were divided between those who firmly believed that such unions either did not occur, or that they could not have yielded sexually fertile offspring, because the differences between early modern humans and Neanderthal genomes would have been too great." (Scott Armstrong Elias in The Conversation).

These reactions show: (1) earlier evolutionary thinking about Neanderthals was wrong; (2) the data were not predicted; (3) the results were surprising and startling—even unbelievable. In science that usually amounts to falsification." CEH