I was looking back over some of my old posts, trying to find a link that was posted for me ages ago, when I noticed in this thread that we are analysing Neanderthal DNA.
Do we have enough to produce a clone?
Can we do it?
How many individuals DNA do we have?
We have a heck of a lot more H. sapiens DNA lying around, and nobody’s confident in our ability to clone one of those yet, either.
Even with perfect DNA its still impossible to clone a dead animal right now. For instance, an ibex that went extinct in 2000 is still unclonable for a variety of reasons like the limits of cloning tech and the lack of a viable surrogate mother/egg.
There have been attempts to clone the Thalycine and they even have dead samples in formaldehyde from 1920, but even those samples dont have good enough DNA to even get to the level of that ibex linked above. Neanderthal DNA is no where near that quality and probably never will be. A full living viable neanderthal clone is the stuff of science fiction, for now at least.
Well, yes, but we’ve got other ways to make H. sapiens, so it’s much less urgent. I’ve made two myself, and I found the whole thing very enjoyable and not in any way difficult. (My wife’s portion of the process was a bit harder, I understand.) But H. neanderthalensis is gone unless we can figure this out …
Then how do you explain our former president?
Cloning Neanderthals isn’t urgent, either. Any DNA samples we have of them are already tens of thousands of years old; another century while we refine the technology won’t make any difference.
AFAIK Neanderthals were quite intelligent, and buried their dead.
I don’t think thats quite the insult that you thought it was.
My apologies. Never meant to insult our relatives.
They might have even been smarter then us.
I know you guys are just taking jabs at our former president, but Neanderthal intelligence is an interesting subject.
The idea that Neanderthals were hunched lumbering idiots came mostly from an artist’s impression of what one particular individual looked like, and it turned out that individual Neanderthal had arthritis and possibly a bunch of other health problems that resulted in him being hunched over.
The reality is that Neanderthals made tools very similar to H. Sapien tools, they buried their dead the same way that H. Sapien did (indicating a complex culture and religion), and they even made artwork similar to H. Sapien. Another interesting fact is the Neanderthal brain was actually bigger than ours. That said, though, when you look at their tools and artwork and such, while it is very similar to that made by H. Sapien, the stuff made by H. Sapien is just a little more complex and a little more refined. Even though their brain was physically bigger, they don’t appear to have been quite as smart as us.
As for reproducing a Neanderthal, it would be easier to breed Neanderthal traits from modern humans than it would be to clone a true Neanderthal, although our society would never allow this type of selective breeding program to be implemented. They are however using this technique fairly successfully to bring back Aurochs, a type of cattle that went extinct in the 1600’s.
I didn’t know neanderthals had master’s degrees.
So people assumed Neanderthals were idiots just because they thought they had spinal problems? And nobody even *questioned *this?
(BTW, it’s Homo sapiens, not “sapien”. Just because a word ends in “s” doesn’t make it a plural.)
No need, I’ll be glad to loan them my brothers. 
You really ought to visit Lascaux. There’s a fascinating doctoral thesis written on one wall entitled Rock, Something, Something: The Evolution of Game Theory.
Lascaux was painted by H. sapiens, not neanderthals.
No problem. Just ask one of the stars of those insurance-company ads for a DNA swab.
Indeed. The ending -ens, in Latin, is roughly equivalent to -ing in English. So “Homo sapiens” is “thinking man”, and “Homo sapien” would be “thinkin man”
Sapiens is also the plural form of the noun sapiens, though- which itself means wise men.
I had hoped that the “doctoral thesis cave painting” bit kind of advertised the fact that it was a joke, but it seems I may need to be more explicit in future.
:smack:
D’oh! I’ve been making this mistake for a LONG time. Guess I wasn’t thinkin.
Nope. Viable clones have been produced from mouse carcasses that had been frozen for over 15 years. Now admittedly these specimens were still in much better condition than something that had been formalin-fixed (which does a lot of damage to the DNA), and infinitely better than something that had been stuck in a glacier for 10,000 years.