Why It Might Be Time to Rethink the Human Family Tree

Anon84 13 points 6 comments August 20, 2026
nautil.us · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (2 comments)

bibimsz

isn't it kind of suspect that there was all this diversity and branching conveniently right up to today and then it stopped. seems ideological.

m3047

Research is coming out specifically regarding the COVID genome which suggests missing sequence data was routinely filled in from baseline reference sequences. In turn, the reference sequences suggest during later analysis constant reversion back to the baseline. These gaps are the (dot) product of limitations of PCR * computer processing algorithms. No reason to believe the problem is limited to COVID.

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