Dating Ancient Splits in Phylogenetic Trees, with Application to the Human-Neanderthal Split

Learn to date ancient evolutionary splits in phylogenetic trees through advanced computational methods in this conference talk from the Computational Genomics Summer Institute. Explore the theoretical foundations and practical applications of molecular clock dating techniques, with a specific focus on determining the timing of the human-Neanderthal divergence. Discover how Bayesian molecular clock methods can be applied to genomic data to estimate species divergence times, and examine the challenges involved in dating ancient phylogenetic splits. Gain insights into maximum likelihood approaches for phylogenetic analysis and understand how these computational tools are revolutionizing our understanding of evolutionary timelines. The presentation draws from cutting-edge research published in BMC Genomics Data and incorporates methodologies from established frameworks like PAML for phylogenetic analysis, providing both theoretical background and real-world applications in computational genomics.