Was our common ancestor a type of monkey?

Question

I heard that we didn't evolve from apes, but a common ancestor. Was that common ancestor like an ape?

Answer 1

You heard it from people who don't know what they are talking about. The closest living relative of humans is the chimp. Our next closest relative is the gorilla. The orangutan is our third closest relative. We last shared a common ancestor with the chimp about 5 million years ago, and the chimp last shared a common ancestor with the gorilla about 7 mil. years ago. The gorilla last shared an ancestor with the orangutan about 10 million years ago. Apes first evolved about 24 million years ago. That means the common ancestor of gorilla and orangutan was an ape, and the common ancestor of the gorilla and the chimp was also an ape, not a monkey. It also means that the common ancestor between the chimp and humans was also an ape, not a monkey. What scientists are saying is that we did not evolve directly from either the chimp, the gorilla or the orangutan. That means they are saying that we did not evolve directly from a living species of ape. Some people who heard what the scientists said misinterpreted what they mean, and they claim that humans did not evolve from an ape, and that we only had a common ancestor with apes. If we did not evolve from an ape, then it implies that we actually evolved from a monkey, but that is not true. We did not share a common ancestor with any monkey 5 million years ago.



As to the claim that we did not evolve directly from the chimp, that is probably correct. However, 5 million year old chimp fossils are unknown, and there are indeed some instances when a species has not changed for 5 million years or a lot more. Therefore it is nevertheless a possibility that our ancestor was almost exactly like the living chimp, and that the chimp has changed very little over the last 5 million years. That is a possibility that cannot be totally eliminated. Until we find fossil chimps dating 5 million years ago, we simply cannot say with any degree of certainty one way or the other.



Take a look at tree 1 below. That is what the scientific evidence shows. Where two lines join is called a node. A node in this kind of tree denotes a common ancestor. Therefore the node that joins humans and chimps is the common ancestor of human and chimps. This common ancestor, as you can see, shares a common ancestor with a gorilla. Therefore if the common ancestor of humans and chimps is not an ape, then what it is? It shared an ancestor with the gorilla. If it was a monkey that would mean that the gorilla evolved from a monkey as well. What about the common ancestor of the gorilla and the orangutan? It is almost certainly an ape as well. That is why it makes no sense for people to claim that humans did not evolve from an ape. They simply don't know what they are talking about.



If humans only shared a common ancestor with apes, then tree 2 would be how the various species are related, but that is not what the scientific evidence says. Therefore anyone who claims that we did not evolve from an ape is claiming that tree 2 is the correct one. That means their claim is contradicted by the available evidence.

Answer 2

Not only was our last common ancestor with chimps was a ape-like animal, it was an APE. Cal had a very good answer as did a couple others. Some otherwise informed people seem to have difficulty with this. Our last common ancestor with chimps was probably something very close to Ardipithecus (Pithecus means ape in latin). Our last common ancestor with gorillas is an yet to be found fossil but it was certainly an ape. Our last common ancestors with monkeys is a prehistoric monkey probably not found. Primates live in environments that aren't conducive to fossils. There are only a couple fossil of chimps known and they consist of a couple finger bones if memory serves.



Someone gave Donut Tim a thumbs down. I gave a thumbs up because he is absolutely correct.

Answer 3

WHICH common ancestor? Common between us and WHAT?



We have a common ancestor with chimps. We have a DIFFERENT, earlier common ancestor with all apes. And another with all primates. And another with all mammals. And another with all vertebrates. And so on and so forth.



"Common", in this sense, means "shared between two or more things". You've only specified one thing here - humans. What is the other one?

Answer 4

Science is unsure. Some say that the common ancestor between apes and man was a shrew-like creature. Others speak of the possibility that the trees of East Africa were rapidly depleted forcing ape-like creatures to search elsewhere for food. They began walking more on 2 legs to see due to the tall grasses.

Answer 5

Apes live now.



We live now.



So we cannot be descended from apes. That's like saying you descended from your sister.



You didn't. You and your sister share a common ancestor - your mother.



Our common ancestor with the other apes would be an ape-like primate.



We are not sure which of the hundreds of primate species we have fossils of could be it.



It may be one we haven't found yet.

Answer 6

That common ancestor, if it existed, would almost certainly be described as an ape; just not a modern ape.

Answer 7

Our last common ancestor

with other modern apes

(we are a species of modern ape),

was an ape-like animal.

We can estimate its characteristics

by finding what we and other modern apes

have in common.



Our last common ancestor with modern rats

was not an ape.

Our last common ancestor with modern fish

was not an ape.

Our last common ancestor with modern bananas

was not an ape.



--

Regards,



John Popelish

Answer 8

The chimpanzee–human last common ancestor, or CHLCA, is the last species shared as a common ancestor by humans and chimpanzees; it represents the node point at which the line to genus Homo split from genus Pan

Answer 9

By our own taxonomic system of classification, humans "are" apes.

Apes and monkeys have a common ancestor.

Answer 10

Your question: "Was our common ancestor a type of monkey? I heard that we didn't evolve from apes, but a common ancestor. Was that common ancestor like an ape?"



Common with what other species?



The following suggestions will help you narrow down what you are looking for, or perhaps introduce you to evolutionary biology and physical anthropology. Keep in mind that new information is being discovered so there no final answer that encompasses all possible lines of research.

________________________________________

If you mean common to all multi-cellular animals, start here:



"All living animals are descended from the common ancestor of sponges and humans, which lived more than 600 million years ago. A sponge-like creature may have been the first organism with more than one cell type and the ability to develop from a fertilized egg produced by the merger of sperm and egg cells – that is, an animal.”

by Robert Sanders, 4 August 2010, Berkeley News

• http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/08/04/sponge_genome/



“Paleontologists have searched for decades for the fossils that chronicle this transition to the earliest animals.

Last year, Adam Maloof of Princeton and his colleagues published details of what they suggest are the oldest animal fossils yet found. The remains, found in Australia, date back 650 million years. They contain networks of pores inside of them, similar to the channels inside living sponges.”

by CARL ZIMMER, 14 March 2011, The New York Times

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html?_r=0

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If you mean common ancestor of all mammals, start here:



“The evolution of mammals has passed through many stages since the first appearance of their synapsid ancestors in the late Carboniferous period. The most ancestral forms in the class Mammalia are the egg-laying mammals in the subclass Prototheria. By the mid-Triassic, there were many synapsid species that looked like mammals. The lineage leading to today's mammals split up in the Jurassic; synapsids from this period include Dryolestes, more closely related to extant placentals and marsupials than to monotremes, as well as Ambondro, more closely related to monotremes. Later on, the eutherian and metatherian lineages separated; the metatherians are the animals more closely related to the marsupials, while the eutherians are those more closely related to the placentals. Since Juramaia, the earliest known eutherian, lived 160 million years ago in the Jurassic, this divergence must have occurred in the same period.”

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals

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And if you mean the common ancestor of all primates start here:



“Primates are remarkably recent animals. Most animal species flourished and became extinct long before the first monkeys and their prosimian ancestors evolved. While the earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the first life dates to at least 3.5 billion years ago, the first primates did not appear until around 50-55 million years ago. That was10-15 million years after the dinosaurs had become extinct.”

• http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates/early_2.htm

________________________________________

The last site above has much more information tangential to your question.



“EARLY PRIMATE EVOLUTION: A Survey of Geological Time and evolution Leading to Hominins"

Created and maintained by Dr. Dennis O'Neil

Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marcos, California

Copyright © 1999-2014 by Dennis O'Neil. All rights reserved.

• http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates/Default.htm

________________________________________

But if you mean the common ancestor to all living things, start here:



“The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms have evolved since life appeared on the planet, until the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 Ga (billion years ago) and life appeared on its surface within 1 billion years. The similarities between all present-day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species have diverged through the process of evolution. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.”

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life

________________________________________

Answer 11

We evolved from a primate ancestor which is also the ancestor of all modern simians, yes, if we traced our lineage far enough.

Answer 12

Either an Egyptian or an ape.



Sorry couldn't resist.

Answer 13

Proto Australopithecus , we don't really know. Fossils have a bad habit of not appearing where we need them.

Answer 14

Monkeys have tails.

Apes do not have tails.

Answer 15

dont forget this was a spiderweb with alot of deadends not a straight line

Answer 16

No.