Until now, we only had fragments of these cousins. Now we have face. Studying our evolutionary development and our sister-species is one of my favorite aspects of archeology. We’re constantly developing new information.
Side note: look up the initial presentation of Homo naledi. The leading archeologist did a phenomenal talk a couple of years ago (I think in December). It was really an exciting presentation. But I’m also pretty nerdy.
Explain mules lol
Mules are infertile. Cranky science person you are responding to does specify that in one of their rants.
A buffalo can breed with a domestic bull and produce fertile offspring
I’m not agreeing with cranky science person, just saying they specifically mentioned sterility in offspring as a thing in “cross species” mating.
We don’t know if hybrids of early humans were sterile. Since we have exactly zero mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthals, it may be the case that Sapiens fathers and Neanderthal mothers produced infertile offspring