Naaah. Too easy.
Posted on 05/17/2006 10:27:46 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
May 17 (UPI) -- Humans and chimpanzees may have interbred millions of years ago after the two species initially separated, according to a study published in Nature.
If hybridization -- creating a new form of plant or animal life by combining two species -- did occur between humans and chimpanzees, ``one might need to modify the evolution displays in museums,'' Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor David Reich wrote in an e-mail message.
The study, ``Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees,'' says the X chromosome is much younger than previously thought and may mean that after human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged 10 million years ago, the species interchanged genes at some later point, as recently as 5.4 million years ago.
``This raises more questions than it answers,'' Reich, the senior author of the study, said in an interview. ``It opens up lots of questions that weren't questions beforehand.''
The Toumai hominid fossil, estimated to be 6.5 million to 7.4 million years old, is the earliest-known record of the human family, according to a 2002 Nature article. The new molecular genetic study indicates the fossil, with features distinctive to the human lineage, is either younger than previously thought or existed before the final exchange of genes, Reich said.
Reich and other researchers from Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined genetic sequencing from humans and four other primates including gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and macaques to determine what areas matched up and what areas differed. They found the X chromosome was far younger than the other non-sex chromosomes by about 6 million years.
``Perhaps one would need to draw a loop in that ancestral tree at the time of speciation,'' Reich said.
While scientists have long theorized that some parts of the human genome are ``older'' than others, in that they trace back to different points in our common ancestry, this study is the first to measure the range of ages, according to a press release that accompanied it.
``The young age of chromosome X is an evolutionary `smoking gun,''' Eric Lander, co-author of the Nature paper and director of the Broad Institute, said in the statement.
horny little @#$#$! ain't they?
I wondered where Al Gore came from......
Naaah. Too easy.
-Eric
It killed in the ratings on prehistoric HBO.
I never slept with a chick *that* hairy.
I have always thought that that had to be the only explanation for the things I have seen that would be otherwise go unexplained.
Somebody always has to take this genetic genealogy thing toooo far.
Apparently some scientists have too much time on their hands.
Now I know where Democrats came from !!!
That would account for a good portion of DU posters.....
Oh no, the disgusting jokes this thread is about to generate boggles the mind.
Translation: There are so many laughable gaps in the evolution farce that maybe people will buy this howler. What a joke. Nice try. Next.
Good one.
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