We all know that humans splited to evolve from chimpanzees. But, how complicated the evolution process was? How long did it take to evolve? When did the evolution actually occur? May be the replies to all these queries are not what we have known all these days. Scientists said this on Wednesday.
It is after comparing the genomes, or genetic codes of the two species, the scientists suggest that the initial split actually took place between 6.3 million and 5.4 million years. The separation process may actually have taken about 4 million years. And, before the final break, some inter-breeding must have occurred in between.
David Reich of the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School’s Department of Genetics in Massachusetts said,
The study gave unexpected results about how we separated from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees… A hybridization event between human and chimpanzee ancestors could help explain both the wide range of divergence times seen across our genomes, as well as the relatively similar X chromosomes.
Via: Reuters