I am guessing this will make some very large waves.They conducted a detailed analysis of the physical features of living and fossil apes that suggested humans, orangutans, and early apes belong to a group separate from chimpanzees and gorillas.
According to a news release, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, "which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence."
Monday, June 22, 2009
Orangs Our Closest Ancestors?
There is a short story out of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Jeffrey Schwartz and John Grehan have discovered that chimpanzees may not be our closest relative but that, rather, it is the orang. The article is short but has this to say:
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Personlly, I always thought we were related to grapefruit, with their greater cranial cavity and thicker skin. But hey what do I know? ;)
ReplyDeleteGrapefruit??? Grapefruit??? No way. We are much closer to the canteloupe, with its hard shell and soft...uh oh, I just became a Hulu commercial.
ReplyDeleteAs someone with no formal training in anatomy or genetics, I'm going to stick with the results from the genome. "Problematic" indeed.
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