Question #80e80
1 Answer
Yes. Mitochondrial DNA does evolve, and that fact has lead genetic evolutionary scientists to discover what the media calls "Mitochondrial Eve", the one woman, or small group of women, that all humans today descended from. She is thought to have lived between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago. Geneticists have also found an "Adam" by studying the evolution of the Y chromosome of men, and claim that the one man that all men are descended from lived between 125,000 and 156,000 years ago according to one group of researchers, and between 180,000 and 200,000 years ago by another group of researchers. These conclusions are controversial, as they do not fit with the established views of the anthropological community, who study the fossilized skeletons of various hominid species believed to have evolved into modern humans.
http://www.livescience.com/38613-genetic-adam-and-eve-uncovered.html
