Well I'll be a Monkeys Uncle!

Well it seems here that our distant cousins, chimpanzees aren’t as distant of relatives as first thought...

A new study, certain to be controversial, maintains that chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago -- a much shorter time than current estimates of 5 million to 7 million years ago.

Source

Well seems like our common ancestry is a bit more common than we thought. Maybe evolution has more proof than before.

We didn't evolve from primates, we were genetically modified by alien beings to be their servants. At least according to this website, check it out:

www.lloydpye.com...

4 million years?
Intersting.

www.talkorigins.org...

[Sahelanthropus tchadensis] is the oldest known hominid or near-hominid species, dated at between 6 and 7 million years old[...]

[Australopithecus anamensis] existed between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago[...]

A. afarensis [AKA the species the Lucy belongs to] existed between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago

Seems that that'd be cutting it pretty short. Seems like it would imply that australpithecines aren't at all in the 'line of descent' to man, but rather are 'twigs' on the proverbial bush (which of course is what some have suggested for a while now).


Here is a link to a pdf of the scientific article (from the news article):
genetics.plosjournals.org...

[edit on 24-2-2007 by Nygdan]

Great find Nygdan,

I am of the opinion that evolution happens a lot faster thain previously theorised. I think that 4 million years could be ample time for a species to evolve from one state to something radicly different given throwing the genetic dice came up with key improvements at principal times.

Givin the suposed lifetime of this species started out at 25-30 years over the span of 4,000,000 years that would equil roughly 160.000 generations. Each of which could have slightly more advanced genetics thain previous versions.

Its not my find, the paper was yous, it was linked to in your article, so good find to you!


The talkorigins page is relatively well know, definitly not a 'find' of mine.

Originally posted by whatukno
Great find Nygdan,

I am of the opinion that evolution happens a lot faster thain previously theorised. I think that 4 million years could be ample time for a species to evolve from one state to something radicly different

They're not actually talking about that.

A population has a pool of genes, because members of that population freely mate with one another, genes are exchanged throughout the population. When a population splits, either because of a biological process (say, some members have mutations that aren't in the rest, or have behaviour that prevents them from mating with the rest, or even something as simple as a river splits the population, etc), then what you effectively have is two seperate populations.

What happens in one population in terms of their genes, either mutations, or even simple ratios between different genes, will not be happening in the other. Thus they are seperate. Genetic/Molecular Clocks track this 'seperation'. Usually the seperation is thought to be a speciation event. When speciation occurs, all that is really happening is that you have two populations that can't interbreed with one another. They might infact look almost exactly the same.
Indeed, when two species exist, but cover the same area, and look the same, and can't be easily identified by eye, they are called a 'cryptic-species', and are usually at first thought to be a single species.

So what they are talking about is the intial splitting of a population taking 4k years, not, striclty that it took 4 thousand years to have humand on one side and chimps on the other, or even to have two species that are all that different.

So there'd be a slow split over 4k years, and then each population will go on its own little evolutionary path, from one, we get modern humans, from the other, we eventually get modern chimps, and this all occurs with many other speciation events and splitting.

When did white people split from their common primate ancestors?

"White" people would've split along with the rest of humanity. The human line split from the common ancestor with the Chimp line.

Wouldent pigment be caused by environmental factors that caused the chainge?

We as humans are fundementaly the same species but due to inherant environmental factors we have evolved into the races you see today.

Originally posted by whatukno
Wouldent pigment be caused by environmental factors that caused the chainge?

We as humans are fundementaly the same species but due to inherant environmental factors we have evolved into the races you see today.

To my understanding, warmer parts of the earth were home to people with darker skin to absorb the higher temperatures. I'm sure there are other differences as well, perhaps in the way we process certain chemicals.

All human beings are of the same species, however. Difference of color is not significant enough to warrant an incompatible set of genes! It's too bad so many people don't get that.