[Taxacom] Article on Human Evolution in the Proc. Nat. Acad.Sci.

[Kenneth Kinman]

Dear All,
      Robin Leech asked me to forward the following post to Taxacom.
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Taxacomers,
 
There is an interesting article in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Tracy Kivell and Daniel Schmitt regarding
human evolution and the 
type of ape ancestor humans most likely had.
 
These two deal with wrist structure in African apes and found that many
of the features commmonly found in chimps and bonobos, but not gorillas,
are related to wrist structures in humans.  This shows adaptation for
moving about in trees.  Thus, they pose that humans evolved from an
ape that lived in the trees, and then came down to the ground to walk on
two 
feet.
 
In 2007, a team of British scientists reached a similar conclusion about
the tree-dwelling origins of primate bipedalism after studying
orang-utns in their Sumatran forest.
 
Robin