 After the killer escapes and murders Dr Coulter, Sloan discovers her body, along with a collection of data demonstrating that many violent criminals—especially serial killers—often share a fairly large number of genetic markers that set them apart from normal human beings, rendering them as genetically different from humans as humans are from chimpanzees.They are a new species of hominid, or very manlike ape, characterized as being capable of "unspeakable evil", much like a human sociopath.Sloan shares Dr. Coulter's discovery with fellow scientists, law-enforcement personnel, and a few others, and soon comes to realize that the new species is on the verge of supplanting humankind in the same way that "Homo sapiens" supplanted the Neanderthals at the end of the last Ice Age, even theorizing that their emergence might be connected to global warming.