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Ape-Human Split Moved Back By Millions Of Years
E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on "genetic distances"). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: "The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago... Beyond that... fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now... [T]he new fossils, dubbed 'Chororapithecus abyssinicus' by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that."
that this comes right after the story entitled "Attack of the Evil Monkeys From Hell".
in 5... 4... 3...
don't laugh too much... there's people out their who really think this way.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Hmm, the immediate implications here seem to be mostly for our relationship with orangutans and chimps, and less so for our chimp relatedness. If true, this gives us a lower bound on the number of years since the divergence between the human/chimp line and the gorilla line, but we still don't know when we diverged from chimps.
I expect they will adjust the molecular clocks to reflect the new knowledge and make a new guess. But the lesson of this whole discovery is that the current models for molecular clocks seem to be a bit lacking.
Last I checked, "apes" were actually paraphyletic—that is, humans and chimpanzees actually forma a clade, and gorillas split off some time earlier (and orangutans before that, and gibbons even before that). So it should really say that the split between gorillas and Hominini (chimps and humans) was earlier than previously thought. The discovery gives no information at all about when humans and chimpanzees split.
"Towards the end of our research period we came across some fossil teeth that MAY be identified as coming from the after the split between gorilla and human ancestors.
Not only that, they MAY be earlier than the previously proposed date for the gorilla an human split."
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The fossil teeth demonstrate that the last common ancestor of the gorilla and human was "out of Africa" (although this has been disputed), it is not a point of real controversy.
This whole article reeks of conditionals, and restatements of non-controversial theories (e.g. " There is broad agreement that chimpanzees were the last of the great apes to split from the evolutionary line leading to man, after gorillas and, even earlier, orangutans"), and there is nothing but speculation and weasel wording in the entire article.
This is just grant-milking, and possibly -- though I hope not -- nationalism and nonsense of the worst kind. NOTHING reported in the linked article is substantive in any sense, and is not worthy of comment or rebuttal unless and until some real theorems are posited.
Non-news. Pass it by.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
You don't seem to understand how it works.
1. _Nothing_ is sacrosanct and beyond questioning in science. "Consensus" just means the stuff we already have plenty of data to confirm, but noone's stopping you from finding new data that shows the limits or shortcomings of it.
2. You are, however expected to present the data and logical train of thought from data to conclusion, if you want to question anything. And more specifically,
2.A. any hypothesis, if it's going to make it to "theory", is supposed to explain the data we already have.
2.B. if we're to replace an existing theory with a more complicated one, well, Occam's Razor still applies. We don't do complexity for complexity sake. You're supposed to show exactly what wasn't adequately explained by the old theory, but follows naturally and reproducibly from yours.
To pick an example out of the hat, take general relativity:
1. Yes, even something as accepted as newtonian gravity could be questioned, but
2. It had to show the data and maths that people can examine and decide for themselves. Among other things, as I was saying: (A) It still had to match the measured data. E.g., applying general relativity to an apple, still had to match the measured time to fall. And (B) it had to be useful on at least one case where newtonian gravity doesn't produce the measured results. E.g., light deflection near a massive star.
Anyway, I'm surprised at the number of people who don't understand one of the two. We have no shortage of nutcases who either:
1. treat science as some fucked-up religion. (I'd give more examples, but you only have to look at the wave of retards postings stuff along the lines of "nooo, don't try to think about it! You're not worthy enough to question these guys!" each time a science or tech story comes up and someone dares ask "well, then how did they solve well known problem X?")
2. think that "questioning" or "investigation" means making up bullshit, supported by nothing more than handwaving, generous application of logical fallacies, plus a lot of wishful thinking.
In a nutshell, noone's stopping you from questioning any theory you wish. Take your pick, really. You may not necessarily get a grant, but noone's stopping you. Who knows? You might even be right. But show us the hard, reproducible data you base that on. If you don't, well, then you qualify as a crackpot. We're still not stopping you, but we might do mean things like point and laugh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You cite about 5 cases, but there were a lot more findings.
Apparently the 98% genetic similarity with chimpanzee doesn't convince you.
Or you just patologically deny the facts, like your predecessors denied the round earth (aww, man, we would all fall down if earth isn't flat).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
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Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago at the KT boundary.
Prior to that time the mammal line had already split much more than we previously gave it credit for, a lot of the main groups were developed. This article is a fairly worthless crock. Basically some teeth were found that looked vaguely gorilla like and dated back 10 million years. So we know that there was some ape-like creature with a gorilla-like diet 10 million years ago. However, saying that this is the Ape-Human split is as stupid as saying it's the Human-Mammal split. Humans are apes. We are clearly within the same grouping of gorillas, orangutans, and chimps. There's no real grouping of animals which includes those yet excludes humans. This find perhaps sets back the date of chimp-gorilla split but not "human-ape". That's just stupid. Chimp-human is a split which dates back about 4-6 million years. Gorilla-chimp goes back 8 million years, though perhaps 10 if this isn't just some offshoot.
Finally, 10 million years is about 2/17th of 85 million years. Basically your math is off, and you're using old information, and to top it off this article is totally stupid. It's 10 million year old gorilla-like teeth. It actually has almost nothing to do with human evolution, though if you studied gorilla evolution you might care. Though, it's even weak evidence that it's actually a gorilla just that it had a diet like that of a gorilla.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Why copy the wrong answers too? Seems a little bit odd to move the pseudogene for the creation of vitamin C into all the great apes, and yet give all the other mammals the ability to create their own. With the exception of the guinea pig which oddly rather than having an identical flaw has a completely different one. Copied not only every answer, but the little doodle you did of what the teacher would look like getting mauled by a raptor.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Apparently the 98% genetic similarity with chimpanzee doesn't convince you.
Careful of naked statistics.. For example 99% uptime is HORRIBLE. You have to provide a frame of reference.. What would the genetic different be between a worm and cat. How about cat to an ape.. great-ape to a chimp. Etc.
-Michael
That's what happens when the Chimp's Intelligent Designer licensed his work under the BSD.
As someone else pointed out, the KT boundary was 65 Mya, not 85. Also, early mammals of that era are usually described as "shrew-like" (also nocturnal, which is why we all have different color vision systems than reptiles), so probably even smaller than that.
The line that would eventually give rise to the mammals split from the reptile lineage before the emergency of the dinosaurs (the number cited is 324 Mya); look up "synapsid" for more information. It was actually the dominant type of land fauna until the greatest mass extinction in history at the end of the Permian (250 Mya), which was followed by the emergence of the dinosaurs. There were large synapsids in the early years of the Mesozoic, but the branch that would give rise to the mammals--the cynodonts--emerged about 220 Mya. There's a rather exhaustive description over at Wikipedia; also see talkorigins.
On a more relevant note, consider the whales. It appears now that whales are more closely related to hippos than hippos are to cows. (Again, see Wikipedia for a good summary.) This was mightily confusing, because we generally take phenotypic change as an indicator of distance between species. The important thing to remember here is that species change due to pressures put on them. Rapid pressures brought on by migration into a new environment (like the sea, for example) will cause a greater rate of phenotype change than would exist if the environment remained constant--consider the shark for this latter case.
Also, as another commenter has pointed out, the mammalian lineages had already split at that point; divergence points for some groups of mammals are after the KT boundary, but many are before it. However, it appears that even though the groups were separate, they all looked pretty much alike until they migrated into the niches vacated by the dinosaurs and diverged widely.
And lastly, your math isn't quite right. 7 million years (the divergence point for the chimp and human lineages, notwithstanding a very poorly written article) is more like a tenth of the time it took to get from (many kinds of!) shrew-like mammals to a similar level of mammalian diversity to what we see today.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I wish I could find a reference. Humans also have a lot in common with pigs, genetically speaking. The percentage is almost as high, but I don't recall the exact number. Heck, they even say humans tastes like pork. There is a reason why pig parts and cells are now used for both human organ replacement and medical research. Odd we're not using chimp parts.
Also, lots and lots of living organisms have some 40%-60% in common with humans, if not more. So that really means we only differ some 60%-40% from some drastically different organisms. That really means 98% genetically alike really means something like 4%-6+% genetically different where it matters. Add in the fact that a tiny percent of one percent in genetic material can have huge impact what it it means to be "human". This really suggests we have far more not in common then we have in common with the likes of chimps and great apes. Especially once you consider not all genetic material is created equal. Seriously, where it matters, ignoring the material that is largely common between humans and other varying life, we are probably some 10%-20% different...where it really matters.
Nebraska man
A lie and a fake for 40 years.
Nebraska man was speculation, not a "fake" or a "lie", that was revealed to be porcine rather than hominid during peer review, and it was disproven in three years with the finder of the tooth declaring doubts within two. It was never accepted as a human ancestor, and it certainly didn't last for forty years.
You are a liar. Anyone who has done even a little bit of research would see that your claims regarding Nebraska Man are a shameless, brazen lie.
What do you believe that you are proving by lying so transparently? Why should anyone believe anything that you say when you lie so blatantly?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Just for reference, my Y-chromosome goes back to the Near East 10,000 years ago when a particular non-damaging mutation occurred. Fossils aren't the only things that contradict creationism. So does DNA research.
Keep in mind that DNA determines mainly cellular structure and everything since viruses has a cellular structure. So the basic mechanisms of cellular function are going to remain relatively constant across billions of years.
Humans are 98.4% genetically identical to chimpanzees, 80% to rats, 40% to chickens; based on the complete genomic sequencing of these 4 species and a lot of educated guesswork by the folks involved - and big error bars on those estimates. :) (pigs havent' been sequenced yet, so that would entail a lot more guesswork, but obviously they would be closer to rats than chickens since they are mammals so your 40-60 guess isn't that bad (for birds and mammals, at least.) My guess is that those percentages will change quite a bit - especially when we understand more about junk dna - but the relative relations to humans will remain in the same ballpark.