Common descent is arguably the most important, overwhelmingly accepted idea in biology. The second consequence is that when biological classification is performed, cladogenesis leads to a natural hierarchy of groups, in which one can be nested into another. Sometimes one look is worth a thousand words, so take a peek at figure 4. These primate species have many characteristics that allow us to classify them into successively more inclusive groups.
Hominidae consists of all humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Finally, if we include old world e. Hominids are nested inside the hominoids, which in turn are nested inside the anthropoids. And the more deeply nested a group is, the more alike its species will tend to be.
Cladistics is a big subject, but we can focus on its main tenet: The only biological classifications that make evolutionary sense are those nested groups such as those highlighted in Fig. These nested groups are called clades. We are apes ourselves. We now have everything we need to answer Mr. If you have just skimmed the rest of the post, here is the take-home message. We did not evolve from a modern, living ape, like a chimpanzee.
We evolved and descended from the common ancestor of apes, which lived and died in the distant past. This means that we are related to other apes and that we are apes ourselves. And alongside us , the other living ape species have also evolved from that same common ancestor, and exist today in the wild and zoos. Being able to observe ape species other than us humans in the present moment poses no problem to evolution whatsoever — if anything, observing and learning about them can teach us more about ourselves!
References [1] Darwin, C. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. Where did apes evolve from. Did they even evolve from something different. Simon, please see my admittedly simplistic diagram in the article above. Apes including humans evolved from an ancestor we share with the Old World monkeys.
Why evolution just stopped now. Why humans are not evolving to something new thing. All evolutions with every species have just stopped now.
Its must be a continues process right? Evolution has not stopped. Natural selection is in action throughout the world every day. Species will continue to evolve. But evolution is usually a very slow process. We know that monkeys evolved in humans but not all them. So for example why all homo erectus evolved to humans and we dont see homoerectus anymore? Sergio, Homo erectus was only one species. There are lots of monkey species, and many of them have gone extinct.
All species go extinct in the end. We don't know what happened to the remaining Homo erectus es that weren't our direct ancestors. It is possible that we out-competed them, but that is just conjecture. We will probably never know for sure. Your email address will not be published. Skip to content This is a question frequently posed by creationists—and quite often by perfectly rational people. So did we evolve from monkeys or not? Perhaps a simple bordering on simplistic diagram might help: Somewhat counter-intuitively, therefore, humans and Old World monkeys have a more recent common ancestor i.
So, how do you define a monkey? He lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. COM etc. Subscribe to the newsletter :. There is a difference between evolving and being a descendant. Wow how fasinating and get more info of the new world monkeys. Thanks a lot. However, our friend Charles' words betray the same misunderstanding. You could write a book on that. Instead, monkeys and humans share a common ancestor from which both evolved around 25 million years ago.
This evolutionary relationship is supported both by the fossil record and DNA analysis. Based on the similarities and differences between the two types of DNA, scientists have estimated that humans and rhesus monkeys diverged from their common ancestor 25 million years ago.
Similarly, the fossil record has identified ancestors common to both humans and monkeys, such as an as yet unnamed primate fossil from Myanmar found in and dated as living around 37 million years ago. Humans are actually more closely related to chimpanzees and other apes, but DNA evidence again shows that we didn't evolve from them. The same thing happens in evolutionary families. A species can split into two or more descendant species and they can split again and again across the generations.
Tags: science-and-technology , evolution , palaeontology. Email ABC Science.
0コメント