i like the implication of these Miocene apes
Remember that recent story that implied that chimps were "more evolved" than humans?
It had me wondering if the ape ancestor to both humans and chimps was actually more humanlike in some respect, possibly bipedal. Again, i'm an ignorant bastard who loves to speculate, sometimes too wildly.
Today i read a John Hawks post that made me all giddy. In new research, the dates aren't matching up with the known genetic divergence of humans and chimps versus the age of these Miocene apes. It seems to suggest that the bipedal Miocene apes are not direct ancestors. the bit that made me happiest to read was this fragment of Hawks' post:
Is it possible that bipedal apes long preceded the divergence of humans and chimpanzees? Was the common ancestor of the two lineages a biped? Or was significant vertical posture a common feature of many Miocene apes -- making Sahelanthropus a possible homologue of Oreopithecus?Yeah! Well, at least on the first two questions.
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