Hominini Information
Hominini is the tribe of Homininae that comprises Humans (Homo), and two species of the genus Pan (the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo), their ancestors, and the extinct lineages of their common ancestor. Members of the tribe are called hominins (cf. Hominidae, "hominids"). The subtribe Hominina is the "human" branch, including genus Homo and its close relatives, but not Pan.
The creation of this taxon is the result of the current idea that the least similar species of a trichotomy should be separated from the other two. Through DNA comparison, scientists believe the Pan/Homo divergence occurred no more than 6.3 million years ago and probably less than 5.4 million years ago, after an unusual process of speciation that ranged over four million years.[1] Few fossil specimens on the Pan side of the split have been found, the first fossil chimpanzee discovery being published in 2005,[2] dating to between 545 ± 3 kyr (thousand years) and 284 ± 12 kyr via 40Ar/39Ar, from Kenya's East African Rift Valley. All of the extinct genera listed in the table to the right are ancestral to Homo, or are offshoots of such. However, both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to all three extant species.
In the proposal of Mann and Weiss (1996),[3] the tribe Hominini includes Pan as well as Homo, but as separate subtribes. Homo (and, by inference, all bipedal apes) is in the subtribe Hominina, while Pan is in the subtribe Panina.
Family tree showing the
extant hominoids: humans (genus
Homo), chimpanzees (genus
Pan), gorillas (genus
Gorilla), orangutans (genus
Pongo), and gibbons (four genera of the family
Hylobatidae:
Hylobates,
Hoolock,
Nomascus, and
Symphalangus). Only humans and chimpanzees belong to the
Hominini tribe.
References
- ^ "Human and chimp genomes reveal new twist on origin of species". EurekAlert!/AAAS. 2006-05-17. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/biom-hac051106.php. Retrieved 2007-04-12.
- ^ McBrearty, Sally and Nina G. Jablonski (2005). "First fossil chimpanzee". Nature 437 (7055): 105–108. doi:10.1038/nature04008. PMID 16136135.
- ^ Mann, Alan and Mark Weiss (1996). "Hominoid Phylogeny and Taxonomy: a consideration of the molecular and Fossil Evidence in an Historical Perspective". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 5 (1): 169–181. doi:10.1006/mpev.1996.0011. PMID 8673284.
Categories: Apes | Human evolution
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