
Scientists Find the Skull of Humanity’s Ancestor, on a Computer - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/science/human-ancestor-skull-computer.html
======
excalibur
> The populations from which the Moroccan and Tanzanian fossils come from may
> have died out without contributing to the gene pool of living humans.

I find this highly unlikely. The groups inhabited the same continent,
potentially for thousands of years. There would almost certainly have been
some degree of interbreeding, even if some groups didn't end up contributing
very significantly to our modern genome.

------
FigmentEngine
i thought this was going to be one of those "i saw Joe had this skull ontop of
his screen, and did a double take, i realised it was the missing ..."

~~~
spodek
I thought it was going to be more like Zoolander:

"In the computer":
[https://youtu.be/L_o_O7v1ews](https://youtu.be/L_o_O7v1ews)

or

[https://youtu.be/H2uHBhKTSe0](https://youtu.be/H2uHBhKTSe0)

------
excalibur
Trivial nitpick, from picture caption:

> A computer reconstruction of a skull that may have belonged to the earliest
> common ancestor of living humans.

The earliest common ancestor of living humans didn't have a skull, it would
have been a single-celled organism.

~~~
flmontpetit
Do we know for a fact that all life derives from one organism? Could the
conditions that allowed it to come into existence not have occurred in
multiple places?

~~~
excalibur
I don't think that actually makes any difference. The earliest common ancestor
of humans would still be a single-celled organism, even if we were a composite
of several such life forms that evolved totally independently of one another.

~~~
flmontpetit
Yeah but a "common ancestor of humans" would imply some sort of convergence,
which could have happened at any point

~~~
excalibur
Let's say that life arose independently on three separate occasions, and each
of these groups evolved as far as a fish completely independently of one
another, and these three fish populations were by some miracle similar enough
genetically to produce fertile offspring, and they mated, and we're the
result. Each of the single-celled organisms that eventually gave rise to these
fish would still be _a_ common ancestor of humans, in that all of today's
humans are descended from it. Whichever of these organisms appeared first
would win the crown of "earliest" common ancestor.

------
mc32
I was going to complain about the (mis)use of the preposition choice “on” over
“in”, then I remembered this is the NYT, and in NYC people “stand on line”
rather than “stand in line”.

It also follows “Did you work on the computer?” Which asks if you used a
computer to do something as well as “Did you work to fix the computer”. I
however contend that in the context of the article “in” would be clearer. As
in “ghost in the machine”.

~~~
scoot
Except that "in" would be incorrect – "with a computer", or "using a computer"
would be less ambiguous than "on", but unless it was hidden inside the case,
"in a computer" doesn't sound right at all.

Similarly, "reconstruct" would be less ambiguous the "find".

~~~
mc32
They found it in the computation performed by a computer rather than they
found it on the computation.

In the title’s structure it suggests to me that they found it physically on
top of a computer.

~~~
jaclaz
>In the title’s structure it suggests to me that they found it physically on
top of a computer.

Pheew, good to know it wasn't just me.

I had already imagined an ancient skull found in an abandoned room in the
underground of some museum on top of a (as well abandoned) IBM mainframe
terminal.

