permian extinction, page-95

Cromag, I have to say I thought the same way you do until I saw a very convincing program on the Discovery channel a while back. It is firmly established that there are no extant subspecies of Homo Sapiens, and it is hard to find another definition of a "race".

If you believe it is possible to tell what "race" a person belongs to from their skeletons - then let's see the evidence. This wont help
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/race_kennewick001006.html

but this might
http://www.theonion.com/onion3545/ancient_race.html


My understanding is that this kind of thinking led to many erroneous conclusions in early paleoanthropology - for example that the "Kow swamp" people were of a different race than other early aborigines because they had heavier skeletons, or that Tasmanian aborigines were different. Nope, just relatives that tended to look similar.

There is absolutely no doubt, by the way, that homo neanderthalis was very very different to homo sapiens sapiens, though they are often included in the same species. I saw some skulls in the Uppsala Museum last month and they do not look even slightly like anyone I ever saw - they would be classified as aliens if they were to roll up today.