Saturday 23 January 2010

Humans May Have Faced Extinction 1 Million Years Ago

This article from Paleontology News looks at the new genetic findings that suggest that the humans on this planet around one million years ago were very close to extinction.  The evidence points to an effective population of early human species of around only 18,500 individuals, which means that the total worldwide population would not have been more than 55,000 individuals.

The current study by Lynn Jorde, a human geneticist at the University of Utah, shows that the human population faced challenging circumstances around a million year ago that threatened their very survival, maybe something like a catastrophic natural event such as a supervolcano.

To read the whole article, please click here































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