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Author | Topic: Evolutionary History of Apes | |||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Perdition,
I can understand the draw for searching for human ancestors, but it seems to me it would be just as enlightening to follow chimps back and maybe come at it the other way and meet in the middle somewhere. My understanding is that the chimps ancestors generally lived in areas that do not lend themselves to fossil formation. There was one site that had what appeared to be chimp ancestors with Australopithecus but I've lost the link.
Message 1It brought up some interesting things I hadn't known until about a week or so ago, namely: "Knuckle-walking" in chimps appears to be an evolved trait from after we split, hominids evolved in forrested areas, and in the just plain cool category, Ardi was bipedal, but still had grasping feet. I believe this view is relatively recent, and I find it interesting to think that we may already have found a common ancestor, but don't recognize it as such because it is so different (relatively) from chimps. Just my thoughts. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi ZenMonkey,
Before I go shuffling off to do my own research, I too am curious about what the modern chimpanzee lineage looks like. I often think that it's misleading to put modern chimp skulls at the beginning of a series of hominid skulls leading chronologically up to modern humans. I agree, and that is why I feel that the common ancestor is more likely to look like the oldest hominid than a modern chimp.
I'd like to see the intermediate species listed as well. By the way, this is the one I was thinking may be the "already seen" common ancestor: Sahelanthropus - Wikipedia
quote: While the "split" is estimated to have occurred 5 to 6 million years ago. Human evolution - Wikipedia
quote: With these fossils being so close to the time of divergence it is likely that the common ancestor was very similar to these species if they are not the common ancestors. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Mr Jack,
Ah... I see the dating of the split has been revised forward, last I saw it was estimated at 6-8 Ma. So my point 1 above was wrong. Cool Provided the new estimates are any more accurate than the last it's not much of a move, and I'll be happy to wait for more evidence. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
To bring this back to Ardi, I'm posting this from Message 86 on the why is the lack of "fur" positive Progression for humans? thread and then respond to a new post from herebedragons on another thread:
quote: Now, from herebedragons Message 171 on Windsor castle The example I am thinking of is bipedalism in humans. While we now consider bipdalism to be a significant advantage, I doubt our ancestors would have. Monkeys can climb trees, run and move faster, jump from branch to branch, and so on ... While walking on two legs would be a major hinderance. Especially to the first creatures to do so. Curiously, some modern thinking is that bipedalism evolved by walking and running along branches, a behavior that is observed, and that this led to walking between trees as a preadaptive behavior to the open woodland ecology cited above. Certainly all early bipeds are also adept at climbing, even up to lucy we have evidence of an opposing toe ability.
Could it have been as we developed tools we needed to be more upright? Doubful. Bipedalism is at least 4.4 million years old, and the earliest identifiable tools are much much later. Wood sticks with sharp points maybe (chimps have been observed making and using such tools), but not anything kept like the stone tools at Olduvai.
I don't really think that our ancestors stood up more and more (as I have read in some texts) and this drove the evolutionary change. NS says that the change is there in the population and is just selected on based on fitness for survival. So if they became more upright there was a distinct advantage to that change, based on survivability. Correct, and being pre-adapted to walking from an arboreal mode would make such locomotion possible in an open woodland ecology where there are larger spaces between trees. This would allow an occasional biped to move into such a new territory and take advantage of a new opportunity. Bonobos (pigmy chimps) are about the same size as Ardi, apparently, and are occasional bipeds - more than the other chimps. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Briterican,
I tend to bookmark particular threads in my browser (ctrl-D on most browsers). Then the problem becomes sorting through all those bookmarks ... (if you're like me, you will have a LOT relating just to evolution) Another way is to reply to a thread, and then you can check your personal posting list BritericanEvC Forum: Briterican Topic Index herebedragonsEvC Forum: herebedragons Topic Index and this will even tell you if you have replies. Using these lists also helps understand another posters predilections if you look them up and see what their primary interests seem to be from their activity. EvC Forum: RAZD Topic Index
Fav Forums (% of member's total of 11155) You can also see their recent threads. /offtopic/ Enjoy.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Excellent point, caffeine.
There are less complicated and tortorous routes which would acheive the same thing. The common ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas would have been a knuckle walker. Whilst the ancestors of gorillas retained this feature, the ancestors of chimps and humans began to develop bipedality. Some of these bipeds, however, which would include the ancestors of chimps, began to get back down on all fours as their ecology demanded, and whilst they still retained enough of a knuckle-walker's anatomy to not make this prohibitvely unlikely. And it only needed to re-evolve in chimps once, as bonobos\chimp split is post chimp\human split. This could also explain the seeming contradiction of bonobos being better walking than chimps, and more like humans in several ways, if they retained more of the common ancestor traits, while the chimps, growing larger, found knuckle walking like the gorillas a better adaptation. The vestigial bone would make later use of it for the same purpose an easier evolution than evolving a new way to knuckle walk. Like big beaks little beaks on the finches. There was likely a bit of up and down going on due to the climate changes - perhaps the savanah period sent the chimps more to the ground and back to their knuckles? Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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