john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Beneath the dawn chumans

Thu, 2009-08-27 08:30 -- John Hawks

Thomas Mailund covers some recent modeling of the human-chimpanzee divergence: "Doubts about complex speciation between humans and chimpanzees". Here's the bottom line:

Voilà! No more need for a complex speciation history!

I wrote about the initial suggestion of a "complex speciation" when it came out in 2006: "The Dawn Chumans" I didn't buy it then, I don't now. This is an important issue to work out, because all our estimates of the human-chimpanzee divergence time depend on the importance of lineage-sorting in the ancestral (chuman) population.

(via Evolving Thoughts)

Tags: 
Miocene
chumans
lineage sorting
genetic divergence

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