But isn’t this the only strong argument we evoultionists have?
-j
I read in Smithsonian magazine last summer that baboons only share ~92% DNA with humans. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Speak for yourself. I am constantly finding new and creative uses for all of my nucleotides.
i have no clue, the article even seemed to have inconsistant dates (ex. “9000 years ago, or 8000 BP.”) except how is 1000 years ago present? i don’t get it at all. here is a different article using both BP and BCE (and Kaliyuga_bda, whatever that is…)
This claims 1950 is Present for the BP scale.
Now that makes sense (given that that is the year of my birth).
Damn homo chimps…next thing you know, they’ll want to be bloob brothers.
But seriously, didn’t Jared Diamond say that about 5 years ago?
um. . . no. :rolleyes:
Actually, the site is totally correct. 1950 is the benchmark for calendar years BP, and BP is used all the time by science folks, especially geologists and anthropologists, interested in things that happened in the last 30,000 years or so in particular. (Thirty thousand years is the practical limit of radiocarbon dating, although with special techniques and equipment you might be able to go back an additional 30,000 years.) Beyond that point, it’s pretty common to see an age written as k.y. (kiloyears) ago (e.g., 35 k.y. ago), or sometimes just as an age ka (e.g., 35 ka). For millions of years you would use m.y. or Ma; billions of years would be g.y. (not so common) or Ga.
BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are a nice effort to avoid religious overtones in giving dates for less than 10,000 years ago, but you’re still referring to a reference point (the approximate date of the birth of Jesus) inextricably tied to the Gregorian calendar and Christianity. BP gets you away from all of that, which is just peachy for all those godless scientists out there. 
The recently quoted figure of 99.4% (e.g. here) refers to the percentage of similarity in functional genes, not junk DNA.
Since this particular article - with that specific figure - was only recently published, I’m a bit mystified about how “half the idiots on this message board” could already be “continuously parrotting” it out.
Of course, similar figures have been circulating for quite a few years.
I believe that was his point, with his sarcasm levels turned to “subtle.”
Like several others have said in this thread, it’s not junk. We just haven’t figured out what it is used for exactly yet. If it really was junk, why do we keep wasting so much of our energy replicating this DNA and passing it on to daughter cells? Cells are extremely efficient; I highly doubt that this DNA is just “crap.”
[Mr. Burns]
“It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times??!! You stupid monkey!!”
[/Mr. Burns]
Thanks for the new sig.
Dddrrrrgggh. I’ve clearly been spoiled by the [sarcasm] tag on another board I visit. Mea culpa. :smack:
Are there stairs in your house?
The statistic would be more meaningful when given something to compare it to. Eg. % shared with a random human, % shared with an amoeba. It’s by no means a final arbiter of how human chimps are, but it’s an interesting indicator.
Of course, it’s possible that a dozen different genes could be the difference between chimp-like and human-like. Or we could parallelly evolve to be the same as something with completely different DNA. But these sort of scenarios are presumably less likely.
Bloob brothers?
What?
Pak Chooie Unf
We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of InquisitiveIdiot.
I’m kind of in a bit of a bad mood now, so forgive me if I’m being a turd, but the OP kinda hits me like this:
“I believe I know a whole lot about something that I believe the rest of you don’t know shit about, so I’m going to go all crazy on your ass when you make the slightest little mistake about my precious subject matter.”
Rants along these lines tend to come up every once in a while, and I find it irksome. I mean, if I flew off the handle every time someone fucked up tax law (or law in general), then I’d . . . uh . . . never spend any time on the handle in the first place . . . cuz . . . I’d always be flying off, see . . . so . . . OK.
Get over it!