anyone else believe another human species exists?

Question

we have killed off other homo's or evolved from other homo's, for example erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo floresiensis just to name a few. Also a species is ultimately defined as having the ability to only fornicate with orginisms of the same species.....so my question is can't there be a very old tribe of people that have only mated with each other for thousands of years and can't reproduce with other homo sapiens...making them another human species? i said this in my evolution class and everyone including the teacher mocked me

Answer 1

I believe you are correct. If a group of humans were isolated for a long period of time and became so genetically different from the general population that they could no longer successfully mate, they would be a different species. However, it seems very unlikely that this has in fact happened, or at least that such creatures are alive today.

Answer 2

I think your question should more appropriatly be, "Does anyone know of any Paleoanthropological evidence that suggest other species of homonids may exist?"

As far as I know there is no evidence that suggest any other species of homonids other than HomoSapiens exist on earth today.

According to source 1a(picture)

Exerpt: (source 1b)
When considering the sasquatch scientifically, the first question is whether or not such a creature could exist, given what we know about zoology. This is an easy one, because fossil evidence shows that such a creature did exist, 1 to 9 million years ago. This animal, which scientists call gigantopithecus, was native to what is now central and southeast Asia. On the evolutionary tree, gigantopithecus is most closely related to the orangutan, the only modern Asian ape (gorillas and chimpanzees live in Africa).




(check out this exerpt from source 2)

September 30, 2005
Great apes, including chimpanzees and orangutans, have been observed using tools in the wild but until now tool use had not been observed in gorillas. Two new reports highlight the ability of gorillas to use tools in the wild

Who knows, in another 40,000 years, we may be sharing the earth with another species related to the great ape family (like us)

This also doesn't mean that in 200,000 to 500,000 years something may happen towhere homosapiens are considered a "common ancestor" to whatever we evolve into. There is an excellent chance that we may become extinct!

You are not entirely correct with your understanding of specation either.

According to Source 3 -
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. There are four modes of natural speciation, based on the extent to which speciating populations are geographically isolated from one another: allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, and sympatric. Speciation may also be induced artificially, through animal husbandry or laboratory experiments.

I honestly don't know why you were mocked...unless the answer was already given to you 2 minutes beforehand. Nonetheless, that is no reason for any teacher to publically humiliate their student. Or allow other students to publicly degrade another peer.

Answer 3

My guess is no, since it takes hundreds of thousands of years for a species to diverge like you are talking about.
Cro-Magnon people (H. sapiens sapiens--what we are) were living about 40,000 years ago and were thought to be sharing the earth for awhile (some people believe this) with neanderthals. SOme people thought even those two species were able to reproduce with each other, so chances are, since everyone on earth (all humans) are H. sapiens sapiens, they could all theoretically reproduce with each other. Even if everyone on earth tried to reproduce with everyone else, we would never know because some people are infertile for unknown reasons, and it would be very difficult to attribute it to a species divergence.

But interestingly, there is a condition called dystocia, when a baby is too big to fit out the birth canal. This condition is said to be more prevalent in relationships where the mother and father of the child are very different sizes (i.e. the mother is tiny and the father very big). Without modern medicine, if this happened a lot, these children might die more frequently during birth, but that does not mean that their parents are of a different species, they are just very different sizes/genetic makeups and may have a harder time giving birth to children.

Answer 4

The reason they mocked you is because it doesn't matter how many homo's you put in front of the species they are all human, so no.

Also the theory of evolution has been disproved there is no link to the apes, haven't you heard, otherwise why are there still apes. It makes no sense to believe such things. Human beings were created, just like all other life, created not evolved, they found human sacrifices, children of the ice, children that were sacrificed frozen in time, million years old not apes children, they have found them in the melting icebergs.

It was possible and still may be possible to find some people deep in the rain forests that have not procreated outside their tribes but I would doubt this, the pigmies of South Africa were only discovered when the rain forests started to be mined for its timbers and so on. There are more mysteries to uncover and things yet to be revealed, we are arrogant to think that science has discovered all there is to know about the earth and the sea and the universe.

I applaud your thinking it shows intelligence and do not let the ones who mock you, stop you from being inquisitive for this is how we learn, you may prove someone wrong through research one day, more power to you.

Answer 5

I don't believe in evolution in the regard that humans "evolved" from plasma or monkeys or whatever. I do think that over time genes mutate and change but not to the degree of Einstein elvoving from sludge.
I don't believe another human species exist.

Answer 6

there are another human species, but most of them got extict, only us the Homo Sapiens survives...kinda queer actually

Answer 7

Yeah well everyone might have mocked you today but just WAIT until BIGFOOT walks in the classroom tomorrow!!!

Answer 8

Fossil discovery fills gap in human evolution
‘We just found the chain of evolution, the continuity through time’

Tim D. White / Brill Atlanta
Teeth and bones from the hand, foot and thigh are among the fragments of the Australopithecus anamensis fossil found in the Middle Awash region in northeastern Ethiopia.

Interactive
Click to trace the family tree of humans and to see five possible futures for our species.


Most Popular
• Most Viewed • Top Rated • Most E-mailed

• Immigrants from Laos win $55 million lottery
• Man separates from wife — and his ring finger
• Britney keeping mum on new baby's name
• Can the ‘20th hijacker’ of Sept. 11 stand trial?
• Tractors: Let the Good Times Roll
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• Flying hospital restores sight to poor worldwide
• Abramoff to do time in Cumberland, Md.
• Clauses and commas make a comeback
• In a land without order, punishment is power
• Hippos in Africa reserve being wiped out
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• Man separates from wife — and his ring finger
• Immigrants from Laos win $55 million lottery
• Flu shots safe, suggested for babies, toddlers
• Confused with carry-on rules?
• College tuition, fees up more than 6 percent
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com

RSS FEEDS ON MSNBC.COM
Add these headlines to your news reader

• Science
• Learn more about RSS
By Seth Borenstein

Updated: 1:01 p.m. ET April 12, 2006
WASHINGTON - The latest fossil unearthed from a human ancestral hot spot in Africa allows scientists to link together the most complete chain of human evolution so far.

The 4.2 million-year-old fossil discovered in northeastern Ethiopia helps scientists fill in the gaps of how human ancestors made the giant leap from one species to another. That’s because the newest fossil, the species Australopithecus anamensis, was found in the region of the Middle Awash — where seven other human-like species spanning nearly 6 million years and three major phases of human development were previously discovered.

“We just found the chain of evolution, the continuity through time,” study co-author and Ethiopian anthropologist Berhane Asfaw said in a phone interview from Addis Ababa. “One form evolved to another. This is evidence of evolution in one place through time.”

The findings were reported Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

The species anamensis is not new, but its location is what helps explain the shift from one early phase of human-like development to the next, scientists say. All eight species were within an easy day’s walk of each other.

Until now, what scientists had were snapshots of human evolution scattered around the world. Finding everything all in one general area makes those snapshots more of a mini home movie of evolution.

“It’s like 12 frames of a home movie, but a home movie covering 6 million years,” said study lead author Tim White, co-director of Human Evolution Research Center at University of California at Berkeley.

“The key here is the sequences,” White said. “It’s about a mile thickness of rocks in the Middle Awash and in it we can see all three phases of human evolution.”

Modern man belongs to the genus Homo, which is a subgroup in the family of hominids. What evolved into Homo was likely the genus Australopithecus (once called “man-ape”), which includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old “Lucy” fossil found three decades ago. A key candidate for the genus that evolved into Australopithecus is called Ardipithecus. And Thursday’s finding is important in bridging — but not completely — the gap between Australopithecus and Ardipithecus.


David L. Brill / Brill Atlanta
Scientists work at the site in northeastern Ethiopia where the fossil discovery was made. Seven other human-like species spanning nearly 6 million years have been found in the same Middle Awash region.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1994, a 4.4 million-year-old partial skeleton of the species Ardipithecus ramidus — the most recent Ardipithecus species — was found about six miles from the latest discovery.

“This appears to be the link between Australopithecus and Ardipithecus as two different species,” White said. The major noticeable difference between the phases of man can be seen in Australopithecus’ bigger chewing teeth to eat harder food, he said.

While it’s looking more likely, it is not a sure thing that Ardipithecus evolved into Australopithecus, he said. The finding does not completely rule out Ardipithecus dying off as a genus and Australopithecus developing independently.

The connections between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus have been theorized since an anamensis fossil was first found in Kenya 11 years ago. This draws the lines better, said Alan Walker of Penn State University, who found the first anamensis and is not part of White’s team.

Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, agreed: “For those people who are tied up in doing the whole human family tree, being able to connect the branches is a very important thing to do.”