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Asked by barnes to Alex, Jools, Lynz, Matt, Rika on 15 Jun 2011.
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Julie Greensmith answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Evolution is not so much a straight line, think of it more like a tree with a trunk, branches, shoots and leaves. We did not evolve from monkeys as they are today. Evolutionary scientists think that us and monkeys have what we call a “common ancestor”. This is a species which we both had in common millions of years ago. Humans mutated one way, and other apes a different way. We dont have this “common ancestor” any more and we’re not sure if we’ve found any fossils of it. But there must have been one if we believe that evolution happens the way we think it does.
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Lyndsey Fox answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Great answer Julie, couldn’t have put it better myself.
As further evidence of this theory, I’d like to offer up some recent microfossil research….
They collected 300 individual specimiens of the same species of microfossil (a foraminifera), took lots of measurements from each one, and did this at 3000 year intervals for a few million years.
(from a deep sea core ).
and by statistically analysing how the average measurement changed occured they could see how this species developed over time and pin point when it split into two seperate species, which started off looking very similar but became increasingly different as time went on.
Very elegant. 😀
Comments
sawu101 commented on :
Human evolution is very odd, because in a period of 11 million years we went from stone throwing monkeys to being able to travel in space, personally i think something was edited in our evolution.
barnes commented on :
how do u know tht