Shaking the Earliest Branches of Anthropoid Primate Evolution

摘要

Although chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, humans also share many important anatomical and biochemical characteristics with a large group of extant and fossil primates that taxonomists have named "anthropoids." All living humans, apes, baboons, macaques, leaf monkeys, and New World monkeys, together with numerous fossil anthropoids, share a common ancestor that originated in either Africa or Asia, both continents having yielded primitive fossil representatives of this group (see the figure).