Humans evolved from Rodents

I just love this article:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Apparently a rodent, found in what is now China, is our earliest ancestor.

This makes absolute sense to me. I've often noted the similarities between humans and rodents - the way we 'nest build' and store food, for example. The sheer determination and opportunism of our small cousins so mirrors our own.

I've certainly never felt as if I was evolved from a monkey and I'll happily embrace my mouselike ancestors.

Quote from Daily Mail article:

Named Juramaia sinensis, the fossil is the oldest ever found of a group of animals called the eutherians, or placentals, that give birth to live young.
They include cows, rats, monkeys, lions, tigers, dogs, horses, whales and, of course, our own group of mammals, the primates.
Juramaia, hairy and about the size of a mouse, provides fossil evidence of the date when eutherian mammals diverged from other mammals - metatherians whose descendants include marsupials such as kangaroos and monotremes such as the platypus.

Palaeontologist Dr Zhe-Xi Luo, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said: 'Juramaia, from 160 million years ago, is either a great-grand-aunt, or a 'great-grandmother' of all placental mammals that are thriving today.

And here's great granny:

reply to post by berenike

Humans evolved from Rodents

Of all the various avenues approaching theoretical evolution, this one makes the most sense and is one that seems to be rather glaringly obvious...

Curious.

reply to post by berenike


Actually I think the article is saying that all mammals that give birth the live young, eutherians, descend from this animal. So primates are said to have evolved from this, as well as dogs cats ect...

That's what I figured the article to be talking about, so sorry looks like you have to put up with being evolved from apes until another study comes along.

reply to post by splittheatom


Ummm.... I'm sticking with the mouses

I feel as if I have somehow gained a little class having read this information. Of course, anyone wishing to claim descent from apes is perfectly at liberty to do so..............

We didn't evolve from apes, we evolved from proto-humans, cro-magnons, and neandertals.
If you want to go back far enough our earliest ancestor is yeast.

I dis believe this, but...... Interesting post

Originally posted by splittheatom
reply to post by berenike

 

Actually I think the article is saying that all mammals that give birth the live young, eutherians, descend from this animal. So primates are said to have evolved from this, as well as dogs cats ect...

That's what I figured the article to be talking about, so sorry looks like you have to put up with being evolved from apes until another study comes along.

Say's who?

I got a flying rat's ass that I don't give for nothing, ya know!

I'll just resign from the species until such time as this is all squared away, thank you.

reply to post by berenike


I'm all for different theories.

To be honest I don't see why we can unearth a creature from 160 million years ago, yet we can't find the creature we descend from, which would be like what, only a couple of million years old?

Here are some more links:

www.bbc.co.uk...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

www.cosmostv.org...

Picture of the actual fossil - taken from the BBC article:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0c4cdcb39f5f.jpg[/atsimg]

Close.
It's actually weeping bunnies, not mice.

Originally posted by dashen
We didn't evolve from apes, we evolved from proto-humans, cro-magnons, and neandertals.
If you want to go back far enough our earliest ancestor is yeast.

Sorry berenike, but our earlier ancestor was a rodent, which later evolved into something that was a common ancestor of both humans and apes. So while you're correct in saying your ancestor's weren't monkeys, you are wrong to assume that we evolved directly from rodents to hominids. There was a time when our ancestors greatly resembled the apes of today.

I'm waiting for someone to say 'I didn't evolve from no rodent or no monkey. I is what I is, God made Adam and Eve....' etc. Just as an example with Christianity I don't get why people can't admit that when it was written the person who wrote it probably didn't understand evolution and thus the garden of eden was a way of explaining the beginning. Even if they did understand evolution it probably back then would have caused everyone to be outraged with the notion of us evolving from other creatures and it wouldn't be taken seriously.

Sorry for straying, just got me thinking. This is a very interesting theory. I'm no expert in this field, but never thought that rodents could have been what we evolved from.

reply to post by OrganicAnagram33


Maybe on your side of the family

I'm maintaining my descent from murine yeast as opposed to simian yeast.

I know, I know. But this topic is such fun for me. You've no idea how much I've loved rodents all my life.

Thanks everyone for all your contributions. This is a fascinating subject and I'm sure this is just a small (but significant) part of the larger picture.

beezzer - I can embrace my inner bunny - would rather have evolved from a happy one, though

Here's an article from 2002 which says that humans and mice share about 99% of genes. Apparently we both have the gene for a tail, although it isn't 'switched on' in humans. I wouldn't have minded a tail

articles.cnn.com...:TECH

When it comes to DNA, it turns out there's not that much difference between mice and men.

Mice and humans each have about 30,000 genes, yet only 300 are unique to either organism. Both even have genes for a tail, even though it's not "switched on" in humans.

"About 99 percent of genes in humans have counterparts in the mouse," said Eric Lander, Director of the Whitehead Institute Center for Genomic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Eighty percent have identical, one-to-one counterparts."