ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)
Content warning plot relevant genetics
So, in a Neanderthal, you’d find these sequences:
At the end of chromosome 2 [sic]: …[other genes][gene ALPHA][telomere]
At the beginning of chromosome 3[sic]: [telomere][gene BETA][other genes]…
Those sequences wouldn’t exist anywhere in Gliksin DNA. Conversely, in Gliksin DNA, millions of base pairs away from any telomere, you’d find t his sequence, a combination completely absent from Neanderthal DNA: …[other genes][gene ALPHA][gene BETA][other genes]…
— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 302)
Why would you think that? Why would you think the telomeres on the ends of then-chromosomes 12 and 13 (not 2 and 3; now 2a and 2b) would just disappear?
Wouldn’t you expect basically one telemore and then the other telomere, but backwards stuck between those genes alpha and beta? And the rest of an inactive centromere in the spot analog to 2b’s centromere?
Hey, look! »We have identified two allelic genomic cosmids from human chromosome 2, c8.1 and c29B, each containing two inverted arrays of the vertebrate telomeric repeat in a head-to-head arrangement, 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3'. Sequences flanking this telomeric repeat are characteristic of present-day human pretelomeres.«
»In situ hybridization, under low stringency conditions with two alphoid DNA probes (pYα1 and p82H) labeled with digoxigenin-dUTP, decorated all the centromeres of the human karyotype. However, signals were also detected on the long arm of chromosome 2 at approximately q21.3–q22.1.«
Those are from 1991 and 1993. That was an old hat when the book was written. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC52649/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1587535/
So, actually it is more like …[5'-other genes][5'-gene ALPHA][5'-pretelomere][5'-telomere][telomere-3'][pretelomere-3'][gene BETA-3'][other genes-3']... in H. sapiens vs. …[5'-other genes][5'-gene ALPHA][5'-pretelomere][5'-telomere] and [telomere-3'][pretelomere-3'][gene BETA-3'][other genes-3']... in H. neandertharensis
I mean, sure. Narrative convenience. But the first book got pages and pages explaining how long 1/100’000 of a day is. He could absolutely have written an authors note that he took some genetic shortcuts here.
Then again, what they should have been looking for is the absence of the fusion site. No 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3' with large numbers n and m.
(Thanks to Gutsick Gibbon on youtube, who explained this very nicely. Search "Gutsick gibbon chromosome 2 fusion".)