• Question: if other scientists have said that humans evoled from apes dose that mean that a one point apes had evolved to. and if thay did what would they have evolved from ?

    Asked by life to Amelia, Jim, Liz on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by 01spencerk.
    • Photo: Amelia Markey

      Amelia Markey answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Everything has evolved is the short answer to that.

      Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. This is a really good wiki page that explains how humans and apes evolved:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Evolution_of_the_great_apes

      Between 8 and 4 million years ago this common ancestor evolved and the evolutionary path split off into gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.

      Species in the human lineage are quite well known:

      * Ardipithecus (5.5–4.4 Ma), with species Ar. kadabba and Ar. ramidus;
      * Australopithecus (4–1.8 Ma), with species Au. anamensis, Au. afarensis, Au. africanus, Au. bahrelghazali, Au. garhi, and Au. sediba;
      * Kenyanthropus (3–2.7 Ma), with species Kenyanthropus platyops;
      * Paranthropus (3–1.2 Ma), with species P. aethiopicus, P. boisei, and P. robustus;
      * Homo (2 Ma–present), with species Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo georgicus, Homo antecessor, Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Archaic Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis.

      Hope this answers your question 🙂

    • Photo: Jim Caryl

      Jim Caryl answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Yep, Amelia has it here. Once upon a time I wanted to study early hominids, in fact, I almost did an MSc degree in Oxford studying them! I find our evolutionary history fascinating.

      The further back through the family tree we go, the more we find creatures that are the ancestors of huge numbers of different species today. Go back far enough and we will arrive at the ancestor of all mammals (mammals give birth to live young, nurture on milk, have hair, are warm-blooded etc.), a creature that would have looked part reptilian and part mammal.

      It’s important to note that Chimpanzees have been evolving from our common ancestor as long as we have, and they look quite different to that common ancestor, just as we do, as do Gorillas and Orang-Utans. There is no ape alive today from which we have evolved, we are all cousins descended from that common ancestor, and in turn, that common ancestor was cousin to a number of other creatures, the descendants of whom are modern day monkeys, and so on back through time….

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