Soilguy. Several sites re. Neanderthals? skin and hair colour:
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200003/0254.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair http://www.aulis.com/news12.htm A site from an amateur but his comments seem reasonable:
http://unauthorised.org/anthropology/sci.anthropology.paleo/march-1995/0090.html I?m sure that?s enough for now. The idea that blond hair developed rapidly in Northern Europe as a result of sexual selection probably tells us more about the sexual desires of the scientist making the claim than it does about Neanderthal hair colour. I think it was on the Out of Asia post where I mentioned that Neanderthals lived in Europe for 200,000 years and they would certainly not be the only creature in the region to change from white to brown with the seasons.
Trilobite (I'll spell it that way because your reasoning seems to be as ancient as your namesake and, like them, should be extinct) do you still really not see that you don't need a whole series of magic mutations for a species to change it's appearance over many generations?
