Happy Darwin Day!
Charles Darwin was born 197 years ago today. In his honor, I post the above picture of a chimpanzee mother with her baby.
My favorite discovery from Darwin has to do with the relatedness of all living things. Humans didn't "evolve from monkeys", but we do share an ape-like ancestor with chimpanzees, branching apart from them about 6-7 million years ago.
In fact, we share an ancestor with every living being on earth. Pretty profound, don't you think?
posted by Lizzie @ 5:31 PM
2 Comments:
Instead of saying we share an ape-like ancestor with chimps, it's equally true and more evocative of the weirdness to say chimps share a hominoid ancestor with us.
Handy primate taxonomy here.
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