Why our common ancestor with chimpanzees keeps getting further away — SkimNews
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- João d’Oliveira Coelho and colleagues compiled 202 estimates of the human-chimpanzee split from the late 1960s to the 2020s, revealing a clear trend: recent studies place the divergence significantly further back in time.
- Genetic models now estimate the human-chimp split at an average of 8.5 million years ago, up from earlier averages of around 6 million years, due to better genome data and more sophisticated evolutionary modeling.
- Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardipithecus fossils—dated to about 7 million years ago—have forced a reassessment of genetic timelines, but it took until around 2015 for these fossil anchors to be widely integrated into genetic models.
- Chimpanzee behavior studies show cultural learning through observation, such as tool use for fishing ants or crabs, highlighting cognitive traits once thought uniquely human and underscoring our close evolutionary relationship.
- Andreu Sánchez-Megías and team documented savannah chimps in Senegal using sticks to safely harvest aggressive army ants, demonstrating adaptive strategies that vary by ant behavior and environment.
Why it matters: The revised timeline extends the period of separate human evolution by 2.5 million years, meaning key adaptations like bipedalism may have emerged earlier and under different ecological pressures than assumed. This recalibration affects how researchers interpret the fossil record and reconstruct early hominin environments.
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