How many mutations to make a human?

I

Ivan Seeking

Registered Senior Member
How many mutations are needed in order to account for the entire evolutionary history of humans; starting with the lowest form of life?
 
aaaah , you want a number? :confused:
I don't think anyone is going to be able to give that to you. Lets just say quite a few, but no more than any of the other recently evolved species.
 
Lets say real roughly that every base pair needed a mutation that would make 3 billion mutations or about 1 mutation per year since the start of life, actually it is much less then that because of the highly repetitive structure of the human genome and that many mutations change more then one base at a time.
 
There are theories that part of our genome actually resulted from insertion by viruses.

Also, our entire mitochondrial genome is inherited from a different creature entirely (the mitochondrion).

As a result it is possible that different parts of our genome were developed concurrently, which would make calculations very difficult.

Usually mutation calculations are developed by deriving from a mean mutation rate. However, these calculations do not generally consider the select/repeat mechanism that is witnessed in nature.

Hence, the question you are asking represents an unknown number of iterations of the system, with the calculation relying on some understanding of how long it takes to develop a successful (or at least non-deleterious) mutation.

I don't know if this has been done.
 
Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Lets say real roughly that every base pair needed a mutation that would make 3 billion mutations or about 1 mutation per year since the start of life, actually it is much less then that because of the highly repetitive structure of the human genome and that many mutations change more then one base at a time.
Click to expand...

Is one mutation per year [or some lesser number] for an entire species consistent with other measured rates of mutation? In other words, do we safely account for the existence of our species [as an example] through random mutations, based on independent evidence that mutations occur at this rate, and based on the length of time that life has existed on this planet? If so, how?
 
Actually mutations accrue much faster then that, dependent on the breeding rate of organism. You did not specify if the mutation was good, bad or neutral in its effects.
 
There is no evolution process skulls of humans have been found that are 60.000 to 280 million years old discovered in coal there was no change found.
 
No skull of homo-sapiens have been found that are 280 million years old, can you provide reference to such a claim?
 
The 280 million year skull i heard about on a talk radio program wich one i don't know sorry, but the 60.000 year old skulls i saw in Discover magazine.
 
60,000 years is perfectly within the time span of homo sapiens, 280 million though is extremely unlikely I do not believe that without proof.
 
There is nothing in there about a 280 million year old human skeleton. If you wish to claim evolution is not real you will be going up againts huge amounts of evidence paleontology, phylogeny, genetics, ect. True the details are theoretical even hypothetical but the fact of evolution is just that a fact.
 
I dunno i just don't see evolution but i think the big bang was the start of creation, by digging into the past the more we will reveal.
 
Andre,

That lacks any credible evidence or vilification. One set of tracks that look like human foot print in 113 million year old stone is not much evidence.

Crushing Belial,

the big bang what bs ;)
 
but the big bang is not real their is this evidence that the unviverse is old then its suposed creation I saw it somewhere.
 
I've seen the pictures of the coal skull and I'm not sure that I believe their claim. There's a couple of reasons:

It didn't look much like a human skull to me.
The pressures under which coal develops are much too high for human bones to retain their shape under.

Also, a 280 million year old human skull is not proof against evolution, just evidence that our timeline might be wrong.
 
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