The Discovery Channel has posted some short video snippets of the upcoming Ardipithecus special. I was sent a link to Owen Lovejoy telling us a "Genetic Caution".
I thought it might be about the problem of the 4-million-year human-chimp divergence. But it turned out to be a simple restatement of Jon Marks' point about genetic similarity -- the numbers don't mean much in terms of function or selection:
"It means as much to say we're 98 percent chimpanzee as it does to say we're 50 percent fruit fly."
Whether it's their consumer data mining about my purchasing habits, or a general message I'm not sure....but I got a diaper commercial before the video loaded.
There may be more of interest in the other snippets, and they are all short so take little time to explore.
