If Homo sapiens and Homo erectus existed at the same time could they successfully interbreed producing fertile

Question

offspring? In other words, why do scientists put precursors of mankind into different spp.?

Answer 1

Yes.  They could reproduce.  Actually, according to recent DNA discoveries, humans bred with chimps for awhile.  With DNA analysis, we'll soon have the complete and accurate roll-out of our species' ancestry.

Answer 2

homo sapien and erectus were different species the rest is obvious

Answer 3

Erectus - the earliest humans - were the precursors of Sapiens and of Neaderthals. Now  if you asked me if Sapiens and Neaderthals could interbreed, probably but nobody knows for sure. Anthropologists generally believe that in fact they did not. We humans are the last of the species.

Answer 4

Um yea, catch yourself up with the times buddy, have you not seen Greg Oden?

Answer 5

Great reply from Gary F.

To answer the question is not an easy question because the Asian erectus is not understood as well as many assume.  They used to think that ergaster(African) and erectus(Asian) were separate until they found an erectus in Africa with features of both.  In stead of assuming a possible hybrid as you suggest, or a third species, they concluded that all were the same species.  Since erectus was demonstrated to cohabit the same environment with its very recent ancestor habilis 1.6 million years ago, it indicates that a third species is not really out of the question.  It is also not certain if all of the Asian erectus are the same species.  A cave in Vietnam indicated speciation of the erectus that lived their.  The point I am trying to make is that some of the Asian erectus, and possibly those that survived may be separated by over 2 million years.  That would make interbreeding very unlikely.  They could be variants that are closely related to modern humans.  Since it seems unlikely that Neanderthal could mate, that makes any erectus very unlikely to breed with a human.  Still, there are examples in nature of hybrids that are more distantly related that can produce offspring but they are usually mules.  The red wolf is one example where a coyote is thought to have mated with a wolf or the false killer whale mating with a bottle nose dolphin in sea world called the wolpin.

http://canidae.ca/MTDNA.HTM

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

Answer 6

patoisc –

It is a little more ambiguous than that. Identifying ancestral and extinct species has some margin of error in both fossil and genetic analysis, and in establishing accurate calendar dates for specific events. Moreover, the inability to interbreed is a part of the definition of biological speciation. The primary result of the proto-human/chimp data you reference was to suggest a more recent separation for the two groups than previously had been accepted.

The interbreeding angle to the story is, at best, a hypothesis about what may have happened during the temporally uncertain period from when there definitely was a single ancestral species until we certainly have two distinct species. It is a question we cannot currently answer with great assurance and which, like many things, will become clearer as more data becomes available.

Dating the separation of humans and chimps to between 5 and 7 million years ago is a significant improvement over the previous 3-to-13 million year estimated range, and certainly learns toward the recent part of the earlier time estimate. Nevertheless, we are still left with approximately 2 millions years of relative uncertainty that must be further resolved before we can confidently make inferences about the behavior of the two groups.

Similarly, a recent article in the scientific journal Nature suggests that claims from a study of human and Neanderthal DNA indicating that the two groups may have interbred are incorrect because of contamination of samples tested. The following link is not all that helpful, but you must be a subscriber in order to access the full Nature article online.

http://www.becominghuman.org/

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kdanley ---

You are either seriously misinformed or you are deliberately being dishonest.

H. erectus is not synonymous with ‘Java man’. DuBois samples may have come from different specimens and he may have been a jerk, but he did, indeed, find Homo erectus fossil data.

It is irrelevant in any case since numerous other H. erectus finds have been made both on the island of Java as well as in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Answer 7

Well, they could “interbreed”, as you put it but I find tile made from fur to be difficult to clean.

Oh! You mean fertile as in a good black earth that will grow veggies like the dickens.

Otherwise, I cannot identify the species designations you’ve listed. Do you need to go back to your Cliff notes and re-read?

Answer 8

Mmmm...love me some cave men and chimps!

Answer 9

This question is quite problematic as there are many hurdles (sub-questions) to overcome.

To date no "firm" evidence has been found to indicate this having happened: not that it didn't, just that nothing has been found -- yet!

The "miracle of birth" is one of life's more apt phrases.

1/ For birth to occur a mating couple need to first find sexual attraction. Between disparate species this could be limited.

2/ Conception rarely occurs on first mating: many repeat occasions would be necessary to ensure success -- perhaps tens or hundreds?  It would seem rare that either species would be so devoid of potential mating partners of their own kind to persist sufficiently long to thus ensure success.

3/ Being an intermix of species, would the mother's body may accept any conception? The conception may not be as resilient as one of the same species and be spontaneously aborted.

4/ As an infant, local influences/ challenges of diet, physical environment and societal acceptance may be great.  Could these be surmounted up to the achievement of reproductive age?

5/ On arrival of reproductive capacity a further sexually attractive mate would be required for fertility to be tested. Would the previous series of tenuous events be likely again to be met?

As earlier alluded the possibility may exist but probability remote: so much so that little evidence would remain to be found.

Thus lacking evidence, until found, scientists need to consider the species separately to advance knowlege and reduce unsupported speculation

Answer 10

Assuming the imaginary, conjectured 'species' existed at all, would they have been sexually attracted to each other? The smell of some races, when close, is repulsive to others. And that disgusting taste in music! (barf)

Answer 11

Homo erectus, a.k.a. Java Man, never existed. Eugene DuBois, an army doctor, went to Java to find missing links. What he found were six bones that obviously didn't belong together. He hid this small detail for many years before letting others see the real bones. But if you don't believe me look up the information yourself.

If it were true that Java Man lived at the same time as we did, it would be hard for us to breed. For example;

1. We would have to be in the same place. It is a big world.

2. We would have to co-exist peacefully.

Answer 12

The answer is YES, they did... Neither Sapiens nor Erectus bred with chimps...