A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome
I am so excited to learn about this. I'm doing my best with my kids to get beyond the banal basics of natural selection and into the more interesting specifics of adaptive human evolution. We are slowly learning about various examples of selection pressures, and I'm delighted to see that my students are buying it! Most of them were initially resistant, but they are opening up to the science more than I think they realize.
That being said, I learned today yet another lesson about assuming too much of my students' prior knowledge. Excitedly, I stood before my 6th period class and said, "Hey! Did you guys know that we share about 4% of our DNA with Neandertals?!!" And I got blank stares. Not a single student had ever heard of a Neandertal. I did my best to explain, but the news was kind of lost on them. And so I lost a little of my ebullience.
svante paabo's research is pretty freaking cool. i remember doing a paper on this for an anthro class!
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