So the no viable offspring rule might not be that good for differentiating species, but that also doesn’t mean that neanderthalers and us were not the same species. The more I read on it, the more I think that we were. Apparently we interbred quite a lot over the millennia.
Is there any way to tell if certain gender-pairs were more common in interspecies mating between sapiens and neanderthals? For example, are we able to tell if the male partner was more or less likely to be sapien or neanderthal?
How were we able to procreate with a different species? Are there other instances of this in nature?
I thought mating two species created sterile offspring (mules).
Well, this newfound knowledge could have us decide that Neanderthals were not a different species, actually.
There are examples of 2 distinct species (with different chromosome count) creating (sometimes) fertile offspring: https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/when-hybrids-are-fertile-3/
But genetically the neanderthalers were far less different from us than those examples. Apparently all modern humans share 99.9% of DNA and neanderthalers shared 99.7% of that. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/are-neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-the-same-species
So the no viable offspring rule might not be that good for differentiating species, but that also doesn’t mean that neanderthalers and us were not the same species. The more I read on it, the more I think that we were. Apparently we interbred quite a lot over the millennia.
Is there any way to tell if certain gender-pairs were more common in interspecies mating between sapiens and neanderthals? For example, are we able to tell if the male partner was more or less likely to be sapien or neanderthal?
Simply put, it’s not that simple.
That just depends on how the chromosomes match A mule is sterile only because it has 63 chromosomes. A horse has 64 and donkey has 62. .
https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2007/ask225/
Its amazing what you learn for a school paper decades that sticks with you.