Of course it's perfectly possible for one person to be related to a distant ancestor by two different pathways with significantly different numbers of generatio

Of course it's perfectly possible for one person to be related to a distant ancestor by two different pathways with significantly different numbers of generations. In fact, if you traced your family tree back 40ish generations you'd almost certainly find branches joining up like that all over the place. I guess it doesn't work if you only list male ancestors, though.