Ancient humans liked to monkey around.

Mercutio

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The latest genetic study on human/chimp evolutionary history.
BEFORE they went their separate evolutionary ways, the ancestors of chimpanzees and people got up to plenty of, well, monkey business.
Moreover, this went on for about four million years.

The most detailed analysis conducted of human and chimpanzee DNA reveals that after an initial separation from a common ancestor, between five and six million years ago, the species continued interbreeding.
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While some experts in human evolution remain sceptical of some of the details, they are impressed nevertheless.

"It's a totally cool and extremely clever analysis," said Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman, who was not involved in the research.

"My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates, not to put it too crudely," he said.
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"Now, a goat, on the other hand..." he continued.
 
Yeah, that bothered me too. Sometimes knowing too much is a burden.
 
man! And they didnt even have the "after the seventh pint the night became a bit of a blur...." excuse.....:D
 
""My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates, not to put it too crudely," he said. "

Laura and George?

Sorry, couldn't stop myself.
 
laura_chimp-500.jpg


Hot.
 
So now we can say to fundies: We share a common ancestor with chimps, and we had sex with them!

Will that make the fundies even crazier?

~~ Paul
 
Isn't this sort of a given? There's no clear line between pre-chimp and pre-human, and I suppose you could claim that the definition of species is animals that produce viable offspring.
 
ChristineR said:
Isn't this sort of a given? There's no clear line between pre-chimp and pre-human, and I suppose you could claim that the definition of species is animals that produce viable offspring.
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Do you mean fertile offspring? Horses and donkeys are separate species, but they can produce sterile offspring - mules. BTW, horses and donkeys have a different number of chromosomes. Here's a quote from http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may2001/989331026.Ev.r.html
Barriers To Interbreeding

Now differences in chromosome number do not serve as reproductive barriers between all species. For example, lets look at some of the equine species ( horses and donkeys). Domesticated horses have 32 pairs of chromosomes and Donkeys have 31. Yet, they can produce offspring, mules, which have 31.5 pairs of chromosomes. One of the horse chromosomes goes unpaired. Wild mountain zebras have 16 pairs of chromosomes, while the last species of wild horse (Przewalski's Horse) has 33 pairs. However, all of these equine species can produce hybrid offspring. In all of these crosses but one, the offspring are sterile. It has long been argued that this sterility is due to the difference in chromosome number, but hybrids of the wild (33 pairs) and domesticated horse (32 pairs) are fertile, and have 32.5 pairs of chromosomes. So clearly, something more than just differences in chromosome number is contributing to the species interbreeding barrier.
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And we might still be able to breed with chimps, even though we have a different number of chromosomes (23 for us, 24 for chimps), but the offspring of such a mismatch might be sterile.
 
You know, I've wondered about this for years. Ever since my brother was born (that's his picture to the left).

But, Mom swore she'd never been to the zoo or a circus!









(Sorry, couldn't resist) :)
 
joe87 said:
Do you mean fertile offspring? Horses and donkeys are separate species, but they can produce sterile offspring - mules.
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And hinnies.

jackass (male donkey) + mare (female horse) = mule

stallion (male horse) + jenny (female donkey) = hinny

Hinnies are somewhat rare, smaller than mules and resembling horses more than donkeys. Both are hardy, tough, and almost always sterile.
 
Yes, I said "viable" when I meant "fertile." I was thinking that an infertile cross-species of hominids would not be a viable species, but of course individuals could be viable.
 
joe87 said:
And we might still be able to breed with chimps, even though we have a different number of chromosomes (23 for us, 24 for chimps), but the offspring of such a mismatch might be sterile.
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Given my rather cynical opinion of human nature, I have to think that if such a thing were possible, someone would have demonsrated it by now.
 
I do not see the interbreeding between early hominids and early chimps as being so strange. After all, they had just separated, and probably looked a lot alike.
 
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