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A comment on Opinion: Another species of hominin may still be alive. Parent comment

Re:Opinion: Another species of hominin may still be alive by neuronic on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @07:21AM (#31081707)
It doesn't seem far off to me to interpret evolution as meaning that specific lineages didn't go extinct.

The common ancestor between us and bonobos, chimps, gorillas, orangs is still around. They're just bonobos, chimps, gorillas and orangs and humans nowadays because some populations simply matched their environments over a (long) time and became more fit in their niche.

The question what constitutes a species, for sake of our classification desires, is also very relevant to this. Populations separating and changing until offspring isn't viable? Why do some of us have Neanderthal genes?

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Re:Opinion: Another species of hominin may still be alive by technothrasher on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @09:05AM (#31082550)
> Populations separating and changing until offspring isn't viable?

Generally, but then you have things like multiple canids being different species but able to produce viable hybrids (e.g. the large number of coywolves we have near me). Since "species" is a classification we made up which doesn't map to reality particularly well, it gets pretty fuzzy at the edges.

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