The new finding raises questions about the Toumai fossil from Chad that humans and chimpanzees may have split away from a common ancestor far more recently than was previously thought as a detailed analysis of human and chimp DNA suggests the lines finally diverged less than 5.4 million years ago.
This is about 1-2 million years later than the previous fossils have indicated.
A US team says its results hint at the possibility that interbreeding occurred between the two lines for thousands, even millions, of years.
Humans and chimps contain DNA sequences that are very similar to each other; the differences are due to mutations, or errors, in the genetic code that have occurred since these animals diverged on to separate evolutionary paths.
Commenting on the research, Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard, told the Associated Press: “My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates, not to put it too crudely.”
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