Distinguish between Neanderthals and cro-magnons???
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neanderthals don't exactly look like humans.They had bony ridges above their eyes,broad noses,and big,strong chests.\n\nCro-magnons are the first modern human.they were found in Europe.their names comes from the cave in southwestern France where their bones were first found.
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Olny srmat poelpe can read thsi I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !! i can raed it, waht aubot you??\n\nI just found that on my facebook wall yesterday, so I thought it was weird when I saw your question. When I looked it up, I couldn't really find a name for it. The post said the research originated at Cambridge University in England, but the link below says it came from Saberi and Perrott, two researchers in California. I wouldn't trust either source without more info to back it up.
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Genus Humanus, and the Homo Sapien designation for modern man...but there are others, check the link below.
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It doesn't make sense to say the oldest person found was "caucasoid" because racial differences didn't start to appear before people migrated to different continents. The colour of the skin of the oldest humans I doubt if scientists could ever determine because all they have is bones. I really don't see why it matters what colour their skin was. Probably dark because they had to survive in the hot sun. There is absolutely no dispute that humans began in Africa.
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A few points need to be cleared up.\n\n1) We don't know that Neanderthals were a separate species. We know that they left no female line descendants, which is not at all the same thing. There were thoroughly modern human populations in Australia that also left no female line descendants. The evidence suggests they were a different species, but it is a long way from conclusive,\n\n2) Neanderthals weren't pushed away. Modern humans and Nenderthals lived side by side for 20, 000 years or more. Neadnderthals were gradually replaced by modern humans but there is no evidence of them being pushed aside.\n\n3) In reference to Jeremie's claim that humans massacred Nedanderthals, there is no evidence to support such a claim. There has never been a Neanderthal body disocvered with human arrow or spearheds in it or vice versa. Remember, these groups had distinct technologies so if massacres were common we would probably find the evidence. More important is the timeframe for co-existence. If Neanderthals were bieng subject to regular violence they should have vanished rapidly from contact zones. Yet we don't see  that. INsrtead we see inplaces like Isreal that the two populations lived side by side. Which brings us to the next point.\n\n4) There was probably no overt racial discrimination involved in the disappearance of the Neanderthals. As I've ponted out, they co-existed for millenia apparenbtly peacefully. Insetad the Neanderthals appear to have simply lost the reproductive game. For whatever reason they bred slower and/or or recovered slower from catastrophe. Over time the numbers appear to have simply dwindled. The situation between Neanderthals and humans is more akin to the situation with Amish and non-Amish Americans. For the most part the populations co-exist peacefully, but the Amish population does not grow as fast as the majority population. \n\nThe Amish may survive because there is little resoucre competeition. In a situation where the populations compete (not fight) for food and other resources the smaller population will always lose out simply because the ststitsical chance of any person in their group finding a resource is much smaller.\n\n4) By no stretch of the imagination were all Neanderthals the same race. Neanderthals covered a large range, stretching from Islrael and presumably North Africa through western Europe all the way to Asian Russia. That gave them a comparable range to H. sapiens at that time.\n\nNorthern and far Eastern Neanderthals were quite different to modern humans, being short and thick set with protruding, flat noses. In contrast the Middle Eastern Neanderthals had no single features to distinguish them from the modern humans they lived side by side with. They were short bymodern standards, but many were much taller than thuamns in the same area. they tended to be muscular, but many were slim. Their facial features covered a whole spectrum but even themost extreme of them looke dlike some people who are alive today. \n\nIOW the Neanderthals themselves were racially dividied.\n\n\n5) Neanderthals sure didn't die out because of the Ice Age. Neanderthals were a cold adpated species. We are the tropical branch of humanity.  The Neanderthals lived through several the ice ages and thrived. It was only when the last ice age abated and us tropical humans managed to move into Europe that they started to deline.
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There are many reports of humanoid aliens. The nordics you mention are just one of hundreds of different types reported. You might want to also consider researching Men in Black. The Jenny Randles book is exceptioning good on the subject. She is a serious UFO researcher.
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A link:\n\nhttp://www.palaeos.com/Palaeo/lagerstatten.html
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Scientists have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child.  The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago. \n\nAustralian and Indonesian researchers discovered bones of the miniature humans in a cave on Flores, an island east of Bali and midway between Asia and Australia. \n\nScientists have determined that the first skeleton they found belongs to a species of human completely new to science. Named Homo floresiensis, after the island on which it was found, the tiny human has also been dubbed by dig workers as the "hobbit," after the tiny creatures from the Lord of the Rings books. \n\nThe original skeleton, a female, stood at just 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall, weighed about 25 kilograms (55 pounds), and was around 30 years old at the time of her death 18,000 years ago. \n\nThe skeleton was found in the same sediment deposits on Flores that have also been found to contain stone tools and the bones of dwarf elephants, giant rodents, and Komodo dragons, lizards that can grow to 10 feet (3 meters) and that still live today. \n\nHomo floresienses has been described as one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century—and the most extreme human ever discovered. \n\nThe species inhabited Flores as recently as 13,000 years ago, which means it would have lived at the same time as modern humans, scientists say. \n\n"To find that as recently as perhaps 13,000 years ago, there was another upright, bipedal—although small-brained—creature walking the planet at the same time as modern humans is as exciting as it was unexpected," said Peter Brown, a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia. \n\nBrown is a co-author of the study describing the findings, which appears in the October 28 issue of the science journal Nature. The National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration has sponsored research related to the discovery. The find will be covered in greater detail in a documentary airing early next year on the National Geographic Channel. \n\n"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans must have met them, is astonishing." \n\nThe researchers estimate that the tiny people lived on Flores from about 95,000 years ago until at least 13,000 years ago. The scientists base their theory on charred bones and stone tools found on the island. The blades, perforators, points, and other cutting and chopping utensils were apparently used to hunt big game. \n\nIn an accompanying Nature commentary, Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley, both with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, England, describe Homo floresiensis as changing our understanding of late human evolutionary geography, biology, and culture. \n\nThe discovery shows that the genus Homo is more varied and more flexible in its ability to adapt than previously thought. (The genus Homo also includes modern humans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Neandertals—all of which are marked by relatively large braincases, erect posture, opposable thumbs, and the ability to make tools.) \n\n"Homo floresiensis is an addition to the short list of other human species that lived at the same time as modern humans. I think people will be surprised to learn that not so long ago, we were not alone," said Brown. \n\nLost World of Tiny People \n\nDespite its smaller body size, smaller brain, and mixture of primitive and advanced anatomica
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two distinct forms have to be different species... don't really get what you're asking but hope that helps...
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Neanderthals are thought to not be predecessors of humans at all.\n\nThe FIRST ancestor would be the Universal Common Ancestor.  Evolution is founded upon the idea of commonality of descent; that all life on earth is related, descended from a single parent organism.  Such an organism cannot be known, because so small an organism leaves no meaningful fossils, and one would expect it to be extinct by now.  I can only say that the first ancestor of humans is also the first ancestor of cats, dogs, bees, trees, bacteria, and mushrooms.
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What a cool project!  So to answer one of your questions, the crucial distinction among your phyla will be whether or not they're chordates -- which of course includes the vertebrates (but also some invertebrates such as sea squirts and certain worms).  \n\nSo your bipedal wolf (I'm assuming the missing d was a typo, but if "bipeal" is a word from your universe, please let me know) would be phylum chordata, class vertebrata, order mammalia, family canidae, genus canus, species lupus bipedalis (and I'm envisioning something like a cross between Lawrence Talbot and Speaker-to-Animals, without retractible claws).  But that's just off the top of my head.\n\nOne thing I've discussed with my ten-year-old son is the absence of hexapod vertebrates -- e.g. flying horses, winged dragons, etc.  If you were closer, I'd invite you over for coffee and an all-day discussion of where to classify them, and how they evolved.  Since all terrestrial vertebrates have essentially the same structure, it's clear they all shared a common ancestor which makes hexapodal vertebrates, sadly, impossible in our known universe -- so was there a hexapodal (imaginary) marine vertebrate who also scuttled across the floors of silent seas before crawling out of the surf and saying "Hey, the carcharodons can't get me here!  Kewl!"?  ...Which of course suggests all sorts of hexapodal marine vertebrates that shared the same skeletal architecture.  Ooooh, fun.\n\nAnd the final question... so zoology is the study of animals.  There's also cryptozoology, which I've described flippantly as "the study of imaginary animals."  But of course, it's more technically the study of animals that may or may not exist.  So what would we call your zoology, which is the study of animals you've intentionally invented?  Oh, of course, poeiazoology (-poeia, meaing to construct -- as in mythopoeia, the term Tolkien invented to describe the invention of mythologies.)\n\nAnd on that note, elen sila lumen omentielvo!
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Neanderthals were fully human.
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The fossil record doesn't show any kind of trend towards smaller body size in the hominid lineage.  The earliest hominids, like Australopithecus afarensis, were much smaller than we are now, perhaps only 3 or 4 feet high.\n\nIf anything, the trend has been towards larger body size.  Homo sapiens in general is taller than Homo erectus was, which was taller than Homo habilis and so on.\n\nEven the off-shoot population of European neandertals were shorter than average human stature, but had more massive bones, with higher density than ours, and may have been noticeably stronger.\n\nThere was one off-shoot that may very well have shrunk in size.  Homo floriensis was discovered a few years ago as remains on an Indonesian island, and appears to have been a dwarf form of human.  Dubbed the 'Hobbit' by the popular press, it may well turn out that this was a tiny species of human, only 3 foot high, that lived in the area at the same time as Homo sapiens sapiens.\n\nDwarfism is a common adaptation found in island species isolated from the mainland.  Dwarf forms of elephant once existed on Malta, and a dwarf mammoth survived on Wrangel island until only 5000 years ago.\n\nUnfortunately, only two workers really examined the Homo floriensis fossils.  One is the dude who put forth the claim of a new species, and the other one claims they were just the remains of a regular human who suffered from dwarfism.  The fossils were smashed beyond recognition on the trip back, and each researcher blames the other.  And then the Indonesian government refused all research permits for the area since that time.  So we're still waiting to hear for sure as to what those fossils mean.
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http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/selection/mickey3.html
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Well since it is strongly argued among anthropologists that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of neandertals but instead we are both ancestors of some lineage involving homo erectus.\n\nI guess that would be like taking a chimpanzee for a wife.  But then there are recent arguments that there was a lot in interbreeding between the two species and that the inferior neandertals genetics gave in to ours and they became extinct.\n\nMaybe it would be more like taking something that is maybe partway between a chimp and us.  Even though chimps are our closest living relatives, genetically speaking, they are certainly more different from us than neandertals were.\n\nTo answer your question, no! No, I wouldn't.
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I believe the (scientific) jury is still out on this one.  From what I have read, many (most) later Neanderthal skulls have been found broken by blunt objects.  Many researchers think they were killed by modern humans.  On the other hand, there was a overlap of time by at least a few thousand years where the did co-exist, apparently peacefully.  Some think that their genes simply were absorbed into the larger gene pool of modern humans, but from what I understand there is little evidence for this.\n\nLet me know if you come up with other info.
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Be sure to check a few sources on this one, as you're starting with some misinformation, and getting some misinformation in response.  (Including ... don't take my word for anything either ... really, look it up, get a lot of reputable sources, and then the picture will become clearer).\n\nFirst, get away from the image that man evolved from what we now call "apes", like modern chimps.   We share a common ancestor, that looked very little like a modern chimp and very little like a modern or even early human.  This ancestor is not what we would now call an "ape."\n\nSecond, there is not a straight line of development from this pre-hominid ancestor to modern humans.  Branches happened many times, many of these branches died out (became extinct).  One of these extinct branches is the neanderthals.\n\n[Along these lines, a rule of thumb: Whenever you see a site or a book with that classic picture of a chimp on the left, with three or for increasingly erect figures marching proudly off to the right, with "Modern Man" marching proudly in front ... run like heck.  This is the *worst* picture you can imagine as it reinforces this wrong idea of man as a linear progression.]\n\nThird, Homo sapiens sapiens is a *subspecies* of Homo sapiens.  The only other subspecies was Homo sapiens idaltu, another now extinct branch.  So it is not quite correct to say that H. sapiens 'evolved into' H. sapiens sapiens.\n\nSummary: Evolution is not a line from one species 'evolving into' another.  Evolution is a tree ... with many branches, many of them (in fact most of them) dying out.\n\nI hope that helps.  Good luck.