The continuing controversy about man's closest relative among the great apes is based on one of the most enigmatic problems of mammalian molecular systematics. Our comparative determinant analysis of 321 im-munological epitopes in 69 primate plasma proteins firmly demonstrates more recent divergence of chimpanzees (some 5.2 million years before present) from a last common ancestor (LCA) with humans than of the gorilla whose LCA with man lived 7.4 million years B.P. This succession of dichotomous speciation events contrasts with a recent tendency to derive Hominidae from trichotomous cladogenesis with Pan and Gorilla, a scenario which makes the search for a single pongine sister species of hominids meaningless.
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