Either way would work for the OTU. If Neanderthals had not diverged enough to be a separate species, there may be one or more minor human races out there that are descended from them and who may or may not have diverged enough after being removed from Earth to be different hominid[*] species. If they had diverged enough on Earth, they might still not have diverged that much 300,000 years ago, so the situation remains the same. And if they had diverged enough 300,000 years ago, there may still be one or more populations of them out there.I stand corrected - that's something I didn't hear about. I was going by the 2009 sequencing info, which said, "no" by virtue of a MRCA being in Africa... but the 2010 study says maybe. Interesting.
(And the 2009 DNA study saying no is mention offhandedly in both the NBC and NatGeo articles.)
[*] In Imperial scientific parlance, 'hominid' is used for human races that are not interfertile with the existing variants of Homo sapiens, even though Homo sapiens are all hominids too. [GT:Humaniti]
The real problem we have right now (if we allow it to be a problem for us) is that whichever answer we decide on for the OTU may turn out to be wrong for the Real Universe.
Hans
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