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The homo sapien species?

What are some scenarios that could cause humans to evolve into a species other than homo sapien?

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    By removing evolution, at least natural selection, from the equation yes it is perfectly plausible. If we treated human stock similarly to the way we treat: cows, pigs, dogs, cats, many flowers, etc and bred humans for specific traits, talents, etc we would find a surprisingly quick and dramatic change in those that had been intentionally selected. This is a relatively common theme in science fiction, most likely because it requires so little suspension of disbelief. All the ingredients are already here. We know how to breed stock. All that is necessary to make something like this happen is a few dedicated individuals (I'm reserving judgment on them). One of my favorite mythologies around this idea is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein and his future history series. The connected but not sequential (with all the time travel going on in these stories what would sequential mean anyway?) Future History. The central character is a man named Lazarus Long. Robert Heinlein. Lazarus Long A brief synopsis of http://www.amazon.com/Time-Enough-Love-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441810764 explains why I mention it here. Sometime in the mid to late 1800's a very rich man found himself dying in his forties and was outraged that he could have such a short life. He invested his vast wealth in a secret project that gave financial incentives to any person that could prove that both parents had lived to 90 years of age or more (later on the Families, as they are called, increase that requirement to three generations on either side where each person lived to be 90 or more). Lazarus Long has a genetic mutation that grants him a very long clock. A clock that ends up running long enough for medical science to fill in the gaps making him for all intents and purposes (excluding death by accident, physical harm, etc) immortal. It's a great yarn if you have the spare time. But back to the issue at hand. Is it possible to do something like this? Yes. Absolutely. All it requires is someone able to work around the ethical debates associated with treating humans as breeding stock or ignoring the ethics all together, as in Josef Mengele.

Mathew Coalson at Quora Visit the source

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may be editing human genes which might survive by natural selection.

Ritika Kulshreshtha

Are we talking about different chronospecies? If so, then as long as humans don't become extinct we will change. If we're talking about the usual type of species, then any scenario wherein different human populations are isolated for a very long time could result in speciation. Some possibilities: 1. Space travel and colonization of different planets. If the travel time from one planet to another is long enough to be a barrier, then this could result in speciation. Or if a group of humans were sent into space with no ability to reconnect with the remainder of the species, that could result in speciation. 2. Complete breakdown of civilization coupled with rising seas. If humans were no longer able to travel between continents via airplane or ship and were unable to redevelop these technologies for whatever reason, that might result in speciation. 3. Maintenance of existing boundaries. If for the next million years, the rest of humanity continues not to contact the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people, they may eventually form a new species. However, all of these scenarios would require a lot of time with virtually no gene flow between populations, on the order of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. The first is the only scenario that seems remotely likely, and that chance is remote indeed.

Madalyn Zimbric

A genetic vriation and selection pressure to increase the percentage of that variation - to the point that the resultant group can no longer successfully mate with us (even if "we" no longer exist). There are two possibilities there - that we just continue to change, until people look back and consider Homo sapiens sapiens to have been a different species (as we see H. erectus), and a separation event, leading to 2 (or more) different species that both (or all) evolved from us.  The separation event could happen due to any of the 3 points Madalyn brought up (or something else). It's not going to happen in 100 years, it might happen in 100,000 years, and it will almost certainly happen in a few million years (if our lineage survives that long).

Al Klein

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