[Bill S (OP)]

Footprints on Crete Could be Hominid, Upending Timelines  by Seth Augenstein - Senior Science Writer -

https://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2017/09/footprints-crete-could-be-hominid-upending-timelines

Wow! now I know what an entaxonic  foot is; I've had two all these years without knowing.

[Kryptid]

I read about this myself recently. They could be our ancestors or they could be our ancient cousins instead. Footprints don't tell us enough to know for sure.

[chris]

Gosh, that is interesting, and will definitely put the cat among the pigeons!

The thing that has emerged most prominently from a lot of palaeontological commentators recently has been a move away from thinking about a linear timeline - this turned into that..., and that in turn became this..., and then they became us - to a mass, parallel evolutionary experiment with lots of offshoots present simultaneously. Out of those emerge survivors while other, less successful forms, are lost, or blend into the milieu through interbreeding (where this is possible). As Lee Berger put it to me when we recorded a programme together last year, "a bit like plaited hair, lots of interwoven strands".

People reading this thread might also be interested in that programme we put together last year, which attempted to consider some of these opinions and present an evolutionary timeline for humans.

I also stumbled upon this paper, suggesting that Neanderthals and Denisovans were the source of HPV!
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/1/4/2680800/Transmission-between-Archaic-and-Modern-Human

[Danne]

Gosh, that is interesting, and will definitely put the cat among the pigeons!

Lol. Technically, even bacteria are our ancestors. Chris has got a point. this would definitely even put cats among pigeons