Science Article #10

Human Ancestors Were an Endangered Species

Gibbons, A. “Human Ancestors Were an Endangered Species”. ScienceNow Daily News. January 19, 2010. Retrieved February 7, 2010 From
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2010/119/2


Can you imagine human beings ever been close to being endangered or even extinct? Driving down I-66 on the way to school with so many people on the road is enough to even disagree that humans were EVER that close but millions of years ago, evidences had shown this had happened. After several catastrophic events such as super volcano erupting in Indonesia that caused a devastating nuclear winter and migration of our ancestors out of Africa, the populations had dwindled down to between 15,000-26,000.

That is a real small number compared to current population of 6.8 billion people. It is hard to even think about this small number, but population geneticist has reasons to believe that these numbers are a close approximation with populations of our common ancestors. They used the differences of two genome to see how large of a population were at the time. To arrive with this number, they also examine the mutations in our DNA.

This study is important to know and see how our DNA and all of its mutations, faults and superiority had arrived to our present state. We are close enough to know and understand our genetics but there are still a few secrets that have yet to be unlocked. It is a never-ending quest to understand how and why our species have flourish to be where we are now.