Chimpanzee-human genetic gap

[zahizahi]

The comprehensive analysis

of the chimpanzee genome reveals a greater genetic difference from humans.

 

http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/widening_genetic_gap.php

[Mokele]

Yes, more mutations happened that we thought. The rest of the article about how this somehow undermines evolution, is pure creationist bullshit, though. Talk about grasping at straws, that's like saying that because Bill Gates lost $20 in poker he's significantly less rich.

 

The technical aspects of this link are the only reason it's not in Psuedoscience right now.

[the tree]

This article is odd. It starts off fairly interesting then suddenly the logic just melts away leaving, as Moleke so gracefully phrased it, bullshit.

[ecoli]

This is not a new idea... in fact, this is a repeat thread, though with a different article.

[AzurePhoenix]

This article is odd. It starts off fairly interesting then suddenly the logic just melts away leaving, as Moleke so gracefully phrased it, bullshit.

It's not odd at all, considering the site it came from. Hit the home button and all will be revealed. I'm getting sick of these sites...

[-Demosthenes-]

I haven't been able to find how close a human is to another animal before (besides a chimp), and it's kinda hard to compare a human and a chimp with out some kind of control, or am I missing something else?

[bascule]

A better thread on the subject

[AL]

Clearly, similarity between genetic sequences does not prove common ancestry.

 

That's good to hear. Next time I get tickets to a "You're my Baby's Daddy" episode of Jerry Springer, I'll be sure to bring this up, nullify the DNA paternity tests, and free the oppressed deadbeats dads of the world from the iron tyranny of parental responsibility.

 

Edit: Oh wait, common ancestry. So when Maury Povich reunites long lost siblings by DNA, I'll spoil the joy by bringing this up and telling them to keep looking.

[Mokele]

I haven't been able to find how close a human is to another animal before (besides a chimp), and it's kinda hard to compare a human and a chimp with out some kind of control, or am I missing something else?

 

The thread bascule indicated shows some evidence concerning other primates, however, in order to get gross % similarity figures, you have to analyze basically everything from the other species. This takes an inordinate amount of time, and, since we've got figures for chimps, why bother with things that are likely to show just a little bit more difference when you can move on to other more distant species. There should be figures between humans and rats floating around somewhere (google).

 

However, phylogenies, especially molecular phylogenies, assess the level of difference between numerous species at one or several genes, thus you can expect phylogeny to *roughly* correlate to degree of genetic difference.

 

Basically, humans are closest to chimps, then gorillas, then organutans, then gibbons, then Old-world monkeys, then New world monkeys, then various prosimians (lemurs, pottos, lorises, aye-ayes, etc). However, after that, it's a pretty long path back to the nearest common ancestor of primata and the rest of mammalia, since primates split off early, and a lot of those early intermediates are dead.

 

That's good to hear. Next time I get tickets to a "You're my Baby's Daddy" episode of Jerry Springer, I'll be sure to bring this up, nullify the DNA paternity tests, and free the oppressed deadbeats dads of the world from the iron tyranny of parental responsibility.

 

Edit: Oh wait, common ancestry. So when Maury Povich reunites long lost siblings by DNA, I'll spoil the joy by bringing this up and telling them to keep looking.

 

It could still work. After all, it's common ancestry, and you don't get much more common than the people on those shows.

 

Mokele

[bascule]

In The Ancestor's Tale Dawkins claimed that primates shared a common ancestors with rodents and glires before their common ancestor with all other placental mammals.

 

Of course the breakdown on tolweb shows primates being closer to bats, tree shrews, and flying lemurs...

[Mokele]

Depends which phylogenetic analysis you believe; there's about 100. The problem is that when the dinos died, the diversification of mammal orders and families was so rapid that it's very hard to retrospectively distinguish which diverged first and from whom. It's like a big knot in the phylogenetic tree, and our current tools don't have the resolution to "see" the individual strands in the knot, so generate contradictory results.

 

Mokele