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Are You Man or Mouse?

Posted by michael on from the squeek-squeek dept.

fygment writes "... according to recent studies. It seems were more closely related to rodents than the carnivores i.e. the primates didn't evolve from the noble jungle cats, wolves, etc. Were closer to rats. Of course this has long been suspected in lawyers and SCO execs ..."

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Recent? by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I believe that this "news" has been known for nearly all of the 20th century. I'm not sure where the article gets off talking about:
    recently proposed trees of mammalian evolution indicating that primates (human, chimpanzee, baboon) are more closely related to rodents (mouse, rat) than to carnivores (cat, dog) or artiodactyls (cow, pig).
    1. Re:Recent? by kramer2718 · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to the Tree of Life Web Project, all the animals mentioned (rodents, felines, humans) belong to the infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals).

      If you look closely at the tree, you will see that the Tree of Life does indeed have order Rodentia closer to the order Primates. I recall learning this in high-school biology, also.

      Yes this does seem to be a bit of old news.

      --
      http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
  2. Tree of life online by njchick · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can browse the tree of life starting from its root. If we descend to mammals, we'll see that lines that lead to rodents, primates and carnivors all start in the same point. Of course, it's unlikely that several branches start in the same point of evolution. It's more likely that the tree divides into two branches and then divides again.

    Perhaps this research will allow to make some adjustments to the tree. However, there are already interesting facts in the current version. For example, bats are closer to primates than most other mammals. On the other hand, armadillos must have branched very early, although they did it after opossums.

  3. summary by gooru · · Score: 2, Informative

    In case you have no idea what the submission actually says (I must've read it ten times over before giving up), this is the one from the top of the article:

    Summary: A pioneering study comparing the genes of 13 species has uncovered clues to how the vertebrate family tree might have evolved. One intriguing result is that primates, including humans, are closer to rodents than carnivores or cows and pigs. Many pieces of DNA that don't even code for proteins in all these species however are conserved, suggesting that even so-called 'junk' DNA may have an important role in biology.