All,
Here is what may be an interesting bit of information on how various environmental parametres (in the present case, variable regional radioactivity) may or can influence “molecular clocks”:
Radioactivity winds up evolution's clock
BioMedNet - 30 September 2002 18:12 GMT
by Bea Perks
DNA is famously susceptible to radioactive damage, but what happens to apparently healthy people who live in areas where radiation levels are naturally high? An international group of researchers from England, Germany, and India, set about answering the question, and now conclude that turning up the radioactivity makes people evolve faster.
University of Cambridge evolutionary geneticist Peter Forster and his colleagues studied the population inhabiting a coastal region of Kerala, India, which is reported to have the highest levels of natural radioactivity in the world.
They found that people living in this region have a significantly elevated level of germ-line point mutations in their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Even more intriguingly, says Forster, those mutations occurred at positions which have been evolutionary "hot spots" for the past 60,000 years.
The rest can be read at:
http://news.bmn.com/magazine/news?uid=NEWS.021001-2Note that you may have to register.
Having never read about this before, I would be interested in finding out – assuming that the hypothesis can be validated and better documented – about whether or not other similar (natural) “anomalies” have been reported from other regions where they could have affected, in various ways, hominid evolutionary trends and speeds. Any idea?
Jacques Cinq-Mars
