Re: Human bottlenecks and bird taxonomy (was: Re: "Dinosaurs Died Within Hours...)

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Within the past 450 million years, we know of only one eruption that was
> larger.

Which was that?

> We know humanity went through a bottleneck.

To be precise: One social group of 55 chimpanzees has as much or more
genetic diversity than all > 6 billion humans together. This is highly
suggestive of a bottleneck not too long ago. The molecular dating, for what
that's worth, of that event is reported to coincide with that eruption (give
or take a few 10,000 years).

> Tiny, scattered populations facilitate the rapid divergence
> into "races" that we see occuring in the fossil record around 50,000 to
> 75,000 years ago.

We see human "races" in the fossil record!?! This is total news to me...
sure, 50 years ago everyone thought so, but that was dropped.

> Why did Linneaus, et. al. choose the Gryphon vulture as an exemplar?

He didn't. He didn't choose anything as any exemplar. He always began his
chapters with _anything_.

And Gauthier & de Queiroz chose it because it's the first bird in Linné's
book.

> It all seems so very arbitrary.

It is. :-)