Fossils Show When Sasquatch Ancestors and Monkeys Diverged

Artist's reconstruction of two new Oligocene primates, the ape Rukwapithecus (foreground left) and the Old World monkey Nsungwepithecus (background right).

"These discoveries are important because they offer the earliest fossil evidence for either of these primate groups," --Nancy Stevens, an anthropologist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

So more specifically, the fossils suggest the time when apes diverged from monkeys, or as I like to translate it, "when Sasquatch ancestors diverged from monkeys". Skeptics will prefer that I am not so definitive about the existence of Bigfoots and some bigfooters would prefer I not diminish Bigfoots' intelligence and culture by associating them to apes. In order to to dissuade both camps from criticism I'm just gonna say that a blog about Bigfoot is obviously hopeful that Bigfoot will be a recognized species and to non-apers, apes is a designation of biology, not a comment on culture or intelligence.

Now we can get to the cool part and why this article is interesting. There was a gap in the fossil record and we really didn't know when monkeys and apes diverged. DNA research suggested it was about 25 million years ago, but we had no physical evidence that supported that. So this is a twofer; 1) we get solid physical evidence and 2) it supports what DNA had suggested.

Due to the confirmation of what DNA can tell us, This finding makes us more anxious for what is store with Bryan Sykes Bigfoot DNA study and Future Bigfoot DNA studies in general. 

Read the details from an excerpt of the LiveScience article below:

The fossil remnants of these two primate species date back to 25 million years ago, filling a gap in the fossil record that reveals when apes and monkeys first diverged.

"These discoveries are important because they offer the earliest fossil evidence for either of these primate groups," said lead study author Nancy Stevens, an anthropologist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

DNA evidence has long suggested that apes and Old World monkeys diverged from a common ancestor between 25 million and 30 million years ago. But until now, no fossils older than 20 million years had been found.

The age of the new specimens extends the origin of apes and Old World monkeys into the Oligocene Epoch, which lasted from 34 million to 23 million years ago. Previously, only three primate species were known from the late Oligocene globally, Stevens said.

"These finds can help us to further refine hypotheses about the timing of diversification of major primate groups," Stevens said.

You can read the full article at Live Science 

Do Bigfoot Inbreed? This Complicates Bigfoot DNA Research

human inbreeding may have be more prevalent than we thought 

"...if small, inbred populations did exist, it would invalidate many of the genetic inferences about when humans split off from the tree of life." --Erik Trinkhaus, Anthropologist

It can go two ways, either Bigfoot has a sufficient breeding population, or they are extremely scarce and might resort to inbreeding. Inbreeding, it seems, may have been more common in early humans than we thought. If this is the case according to Erik Trinkhaus, an anthropologist at Washington University says if small, inbred populations did exist, it would invalidate many of the genetic inferences about when humans split off from the tree of life, because these inferences assume large, stable populations.

Why is human inbreeding even being debated? New fossil evidence is changing how anthropologist view the human tree of life.

The evidence comes from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull unearthed at a site called Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin of northern China. The skull's owner appears to have had a now-rare congenital deformity that probably arose through inbreeding, researchers report today (March 18) in the journal PLOS ONE.

The fossil, now dubbed Xujiayao 11, is just one of many examples of ancient human remains that display rare or unknown congenital abnormalities, according to the researchers. "These populations were probably relatively isolated, very small and, as a consequence, fairly inbred," study leader Erik Trinkhaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience.

Before I get emails from an offended Sasquatch or an inbred challenging me to a banjo playoff. There may be an argument that primates, especially ones more in tune with their animal nature, have a mechanism against inbreeding.

According Live Science some primates recognize the sound of kin.

Previous studies have found that animals living in complex social groups have no trouble recognizing their own kin's calls, particularly the sounds of maternal relatives. Even goat mamas keep a long-term memory for their baby's calls, according to a study published earlier this year.

But less is known about how animals recognize their father's calls, and the cries of the relatives on dad's side of the family. Likewise, researchers know very little about how solitary-living animals avoid inbreeding with dad's side of the family.

That's where the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) comes in. These cartoonishly cute lemurs are raised by their mothers without help from dad. When they grow up, they head out of the nest to forage on their own. But male lemurs' ranges are large, and they often overlap with that of their daughters', suggesting the primitive primates have evolved some way to avoid accidentally mating with a relative.

The take-away, Kessler and her colleagues wrote, is that recognizing dad's voice requires neither a big brain nor a complex social life. In fact, ability to recognize kin may have preceded complex social structures in evolutionary history.

What is most interesting to us at Bigfoot Lunch Club is how inbreeding messes up how we understand human lineage and how it may have an affect on human DNA research, at least as far as . If the current Bigfoot DNA research being done by Dr. Melba Ketchum or Dr. Bryan Sykes is also based on human lineage, do these need to be rethought as well?

Watch the video below to learn more about how the deformed fossils found in China could change how we think of how humans split off from the tree of life.