Re: Mr Muah Man could be correct


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Human Ancestors May Have Interbred With Chimpanzees

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01


When the ancestors of human beings and the ancestors of chimpanzees parted
ways 6.3 million years ago, it was probably a very long goodbye. Some of
their descendants may even have gone back for a final tryst.

That is the conclusion a group of scientists has reached, using a
comparison of the genes of humans and their closest animal relatives to
sketch a picture of human origins far more detailed than what fossil bones
have revealed.> The 7 million-year-old Toumai skull unearthed in Chad in
2001 may have belonged to a line of non-hybrids that were not human
ancestors. (Associated Press)
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According to the new theory, chimps and humans shared a common apelike
ancestor much more recently than was thought. Furthermore, when the two
emerging species split from each other, it was not a clean break. Some
members of the two groups seem to have interbred about 1.2 million years
after they first diverged -- before going their separate ways for good.

If this theory proves correct, it will mean modern people are descended
from something akin to chimp-human hybrids. That is a new idea, and it
challenges the prevailing view that hybrids tend to die out.

It also strongly suggests that some of the oldest bones of
"proto-humans" -- including the 7 million-year-old Toumai skull unearthed
in Chad in 2001 -- may have belonged to a line of non-hybrids that died
out, and were not human ancestors at all.

This narrative, by a team of geneticists and biostatisticians from the
Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard,
not only casts new light on the origin of humans, but also raises
questions about how all new species arise.

"This is contributing to the idea that species are kind of fuzzy. They
become real over time, but it takes millions of years," said James Mallet,
a geneticist at University College London who was not involved in the new
research. "We probably had a bit of a messy origin."

The research is the latest fruit of the Human Genome Initiative, the
effort to transcribe and read out the entire genetic message of human
chromosomes, which was completed in 2003.

The evidence of ancestral chimp and human interbreeding emerged from
comparing parts of their genomes to each other and to those of gorillas,
orangutans and macaques. The scientists now want to know whether similar
"hybridization events" happened between other emerging species.

The separation into two species "left a footprint on our genome that we
can go back and read," said Eric S. Lander of MIT. "We were never able to
look at things like this before. What we need to do now is to collect more
data and look for other smoking guns."

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes that contain about 30,000 genes. Each
gene is made of strands of DNA "letters" in a specific order, and the
letters can change, by mutation, over time. The rate at which changes
occur is fairly constant -- and very slow.

As a result, genetic mutations can be used as a kind of evolutionary
clock. The number of DNA differences between two species' versions of the
same gene is an indication of how long the species have been separate --
how long since individuals were last interbreeding and sharing genes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702158.html







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