The Scars of Evolution:"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine MorganOrangutans and human originsHumans have a larger number of features that are uniquely shared with orangutans than with any other living ape. Schwartz (1984) proposed that humans are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees - a model that contradicts the greater genetic similarity of base pair sequences in humans and chimpanzees.
Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz
Department of Anthropology
University of Pittsburgh
The view presented here is that genetic similarity of base pair sequences is not a necessary measure of phylogenetic relationship and that morphology continues to exist as an independently reliable source of information on evolutionary relationships. The orangutan model presents a conundrum for biological systematics over how to chose between morphological and genetic evidence when they are in conflict.Asian Roots for AnthropoidsIn previous decades, evidence for early anthropoids (the group including all living and extinct monkeys, apes, and humans) came predominantly from northern Africa. Notable finds included the Oligocene's Aegyptopithecus in Egypt's Fayum region dating about 36-25 million years ago (myr). While many known phylogenetic links exist between Aegyptopithecus and an abundant range of later, Miocene, primates found in Africa and Asia, until recently there was little data on ties with the earlier primates of the Eocene era.
Athena Review: Vol.2, no. 3 (2000)
A few years ago in 1994-96, caves in central China revealed the first evidence of a 45-million- year-old primate named Eosimias or "Dawn Ape" by discoverers K.C. Beard of the Carnegie Institute and colleagues from the Beijing Institute of Verterbrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (AR 1,1). While preliminary findings of Eosimias were limited to a few tiny teeth and jaw fragments, it was enough for Beard and his IVPP colleagues to suggest a Middle to Late Eocene emergence in eastern Asia of the mosaic of traits leading from primitive to anthropoid physiology. This has been further supported by more recent evidence reported in the journal Nature of new findings in China of an Eosimias leg and foot bones, which are claimed to exhibit diagnostic anthropoid traits.
More recently, fossil teeth and jaw fragments found in 1996-98 in Myanmar (Burma) in southeast Asia have provided further evidence that higher primates may have originated in Asia. The 40-million-year-old Bahinia pondaungensis, a tarsier-like tree-dweller and insect eater the size of today's smallest monkey, has been classified by Jean-Jacques Jaeger of France's Université Montpellier-II as an anthropoid.