News tagged with ancestors
Digging up the past
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of St Andrews have discovered what they think are the remains of our earliest known ancestor.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Feb 09, 2012 |
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Neanderthal demise due to many influences, including cultural changes: study
As an ice age crept upon them thousands of years ago, Neanderthals and modern human ancestors expanded their territory ranges across Asia and Europe to adapt to the changing environment.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Feb 07, 2012 |
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Namibia sponge fossils are world's first animals: study
Scientists digging in a Namibian national park have uncovered sponge-like fossils they say are the first animals, a discovery that would push the emergence of animal life back millions of years.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Feb 06, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (12) |
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New 'shieldcroc' species of ancient crocodile discovered
A University of Missouri researcher has identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile. The extinct creature, nicknamed "Shieldcroc" due to a thick-skinned shield on its head, is an ancestor of today's ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 31, 2012 |
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New study of hunter-gatherers suggests social networks sparked evolution of cooperation
Ancient humans may not have had the luxury of updating their Facebook status, but social networks were nevertheless an essential component of their lives, a new study suggests.
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Jan 25, 2012 |
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Neanderthals and their contemporaries engineered stone tools
(PhysOrg.com) -- New published research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has scientifically supported for the first time the long held theory that early human ancestors across Africa, Western ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 24, 2012 |
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Dog skull dates back 33,000 years
If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 23, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (15) |
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Unraveling the Chinese cabbage genome
Clues into the evolutionary diversification of brassicas have emerged from the draft Chinese cabbage genome sequence. Brassica crops include many agriculturally important vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage, ...
Jan 20, 2012 |
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Study shows early primate had a transitional lemur-like grooming claw
Celebrities are channeling a distant relative with what Harper's Bazaar describes as the latest trend in nail fashion for 2012: claws. But this may not be the first time primates traded their nails for claws.
Jan 10, 2012 |
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I know something you don't know -- and I will tell you
Researchers found that wild chimpanzees monitor the information available to other chimpanzees and inform their ignorant group members of danger.
Dec 29, 2011 |
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Couple finds evidence indicating earliest humans lived by rivers and streams
(PhysOrg.com) -- When many people think of our earliest human ancestors, they think of the hot dried out dusty environments in Africa in which many of their remains were found. Unfortunately, such images don’t ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Dec 26, 2011 |
3.3 / 5 (23) |
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'Animal embryo' fossils are actually microbes (Update)
Tiny fossils that scientists have thought for decades were the embryos of the earliest animals ever found have turned out to be the remains of much simpler microbial organisms.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Dec 22, 2011 |
4.6 / 5 (11) |
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U.K. duo suggest early humans retained fine hair to ward off parasites
(PhysOrg.com) -- Evolutionary biologists have long been puzzled by the question of why human beings have retained body hair. Most agree that changes to the fur that our ancestors sported came about as a means ...
Dec 15, 2011 |
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Endangered orangutans offer a new evolutionary model for early humans
Starving orangutans in Borneo may be teaching us new lessons about human evolution.
Dec 13, 2011 |
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Shrimp-like crustacean found to make gooey underwater silk
(PhysOrg.com) -- Fritz Vollrath and colleagues from Oxford University have been analyzing the gooey material produced by tiny amphipods known as Crassicorophium bonellii, a small shrimp-like creature that p ...
Nov 23, 2011 |
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Ancestor
An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth).
Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer.
Assuming that all of an individual's ancestors are otherwise unrelated to each other, that individual has 2n ancestors in the nth generation before him and a total of about 2g+1 ancestors in the g generations before him. In practice, however, it is clear that the vast majority of ancestors of humans (and indeed any other species) are multiply related (see Pedigree collapse). Consider n = 40: the human species is more than 40 generations old, yet the number 240, approximately 1012 or one trillion, dwarfs the number of humans that have ever lived.
Ignoring the possibility of other inter-relationships (even distant ones) among ancestors, an individual has a total of 2046 ancestors up to the 10th generation, 1024 of which are 10th generation ancestors. With the same assumption, any given person has over a billion 30th generation ancestors (who lived roughly 1000 years ago) and this theoretical number increases past the estimated total population of the world in around AD 1000. (All of these ancestors will have contributed to one's autosomal DNA is concerned: this excludes Y-chromosomal DNA and mitochondrial DNA.)
Some cultures confer reverence to ancestors, both living and dead; in contrast, some more youth-oriented cultural contexts display less veneration of elders. In other cultural contexts, some people seek providence from their deceased ancestors; this practice is sometimes known as ancestor worship or, more accurately, ancestor veneration.
For more information about Ancestor, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
