Humans didn't descend from chimpanzees

[steven johnson]

The notion that humans descended from a chimpanzee-like ancestor has come into question.

Humanity's immediate predecessors may have had trouble climbing trees, research suggests – so they may not have been as ape-like as many experts believe.

The hominins lived between 1.5 and 4.1 million years ago, a relatively short time after proto-humans and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor (generally thought to have been between four and eight million years ago). Many experts have argued that this ancestor was probably quite chimpanzee-like, and as a result it has been widely assumed that the earliest humans were ape-like, too.

"dorsiflexion" – the degree to which the ankle rotates to point the toes upwards.

To assist dorsiflexion, he found, the bottom of the chimpanzee tibia – the larger of the two bones in the lower leg – is shaped in a certain way where it joins the ankle. But when Dr DeSilva examined 12 fossil tibias from early hominins, he found no such adaptation.

Combined with other skeletal details, the evidence indicated that early human ancestors could not have been good climbers. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr DeSilva says: "Early hominins may have climbed trees like modern humans can and occasionally do today; however, this study suggests that vertical climbing and arboreality were not significant parts of their locomotor repertoire."
He specifies: "Modern chimpanzees safely and effectively climb trees in part because they are capable of extreme dorsiflexion and inversion at the ankle joint. Although early hominins have been hypothesised to be adept tree climbers, none of the 29 known fossil tibiae or tali from 4.12 to 1.53 million years ago possesses the combination of features functionally correlated with vertical climbing in modern chimpanzees. If early hominins were engaging in any substantial amount of arboreal climbing, then they were doing it in a manner ... distinct from modern chimpanzees."


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-our-ancestors-couldnt-ape-chimps-1668260.html

[lurky]

1. We share a common ancestor with chimps.

Not the same as being descended from chimps. The headline is intentionally provocative. Chimps are still our closest genetic cousins.

[Trajan]

7. It's the same fallacious claim, as always ....

I didn't come from no damned Ape!

Nobody is claiming 'we came from apes (or chimps) .... The principles point to a common ancestor between hominids ...

Hell ... between EVERYTHING that walks the earth ... There is a progression of biological development, and no one of consequence claims men 'came from chimpanzees' ...

It's a classic Strawman ....

[aquart]

2. No? Really? What a surprise.

Not a lotta trees on a beach. Not a lotta chimps with a diving adaptation.

[billyoc]

3. Finally! We can stop slandering the chimps.

:rofl:

[lazer47]

4. More likely we came from apes,, ie: Bush,,Cheney,, Limbaugh,, Rove

PRIME-APE Examples

[Downtown Hound]

5. I don't care what that article says

Although based on this picture I'm actually willing to admit that maybe chimps evolved from us.

[lazer47]

6. You have to evolve up, you can't evolve lower than this thing in the Picture

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. Evolution is not a hierarchic process

It is a process of adaptation, not improvement. Sometimes, random mutations appear that are not immediately harmful, as you so eloquently illustrate.

[hunter]

9. How does that change anything?

Ankle shape is probably a fairly simple switch in the hominid compiler. Modify the growth rate a little bit one way and you get a chimp ankle, another way and you get a human ankle.

Chimps evolved from a more human-like ancestor common to us both.

If you falsely insist on some hierarchy of evolution that means chimps are "above" us.

(Well, duh. Humans are walking around on the dirt, and chimps are in the trees closer to God...)

[Orrex]

10. For one thing, it means I need to come up with a new excuse when flinging feces at my coworkers

"My chimp ancestor made me do it" just won't cut it anymore, I'm afraid...

[eShirl]

11. I'm not a descendant of my first cousin, either.

But we share a pair of grandparents, and all their ancestors.