Question

How are species defined, both for living animals and for extinct one? Use the Neanderthals to illustrate the problem encountered in distinguishing species among excint hominins. Constrast specifically the interpretation of Neanderthals as a distinct species with the interpretation of Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens

Answer 1

According to the biological species concept, a biological species is the one in which, organisms can have interbred and produce the viable offspring. A community contains different species. Species diversity is the number of different species present in a particular community.

Although there are evidence proving that the Neanderthals could and did mate with H. sapiens and produced a hybrid offspring, Neanderthals are showed as a subspecies in the phylogenetic tree. Although Neanderthals could have produced a hybrid offspring with H. sapiens, they were extinct and gradually, their genome was absorbed into the humans and they were extinct. So, the history of Neanderthals is in contrast to the standard definition of species.