Yes I know. It’s quite obvious when ERVs get there via one of two methods (either common descent or seperate lineage insertions). We discussed quite extensively a paper by Yohn et. al. from 2005 that let us know that:
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When there is a viral infection of this nature that infects two populations independently, you might see less than 5% in the same spot in the genome.
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In humans and chimpanzees, there are 203,000 ERVs and less than 300 are in different spots… meaning that we see 99.86% in the same spot. This cannot be explained by separate viral infections and the most parsimonious explanation by a long shot is common descent.
(note going to move this over to the other thread so as not to go on a rabbit trail from this new paper you are discussing)