

Age confirmed for 'Eve,' mother of all humans - edw519
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38786481/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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btilly
The research is interesting, but I have to register strong disagreement with
Marek Kimmel's comment that _the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less
than the age of the true, first female modern human._

If the defining characteristics that define "modern human" arose outside of
the mitochondria (which is very likely when you consider evolutionary
adaptation happens far faster with traits that have sexual recombination),
then those characteristics can easily arise and spread through the population
without strongly selecting for or against any particular mitochondrial line.
Therefore there is little logical relationship between how far back the
speciation event was, and when the mitochondrial 'Eve' happened.

That said, the theory of punctuated equilibrium predicts that speciation tends
to take place in small, isolated populations that are a potential
mitochondrial bottleneck as well. But that bottleneck is not necessarily going
to lead to a mitochondrial 'Eve'. And when the new species spreads out, it may
breed true but it is not necessarily entirely reproductively isolated. That
could reintroduce old mitochondrial lines. See, for instance,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm> for a description of
recent evidence that _homo sapiens_ bred with Neanderthals, long after those
two had diverged in different directions.

