Man & Chimps Living Together?
Recently discovered fossils of chimps are causing some problems for scientists. This is the first fossil evidence that humans and chimps coexisted in the same place in the past. Why is this a problem for evolution? Read on…
It had previously been thought that chimps never lived in the arid Rift Valley—they prefer more lush environments like the Congo and jungles of western Africa. For years scientists believed that early human ancestors left the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grasslands and that this move caused the evolutionary split between the human and chimp lines.
But now, with the discovery of ancient chimps and humans in the same area, evolutionists may have to rethink what caused humans to become humans.
The existing theories of human evolution are built on this split in environment as the explanation of the move to bipedalism (and as an orgin of humans). Natural selection would have allowed a common ancestor to evolve into a bipedal species in the grasslands of the Rift Valley vs selecting for more chimp-like qualities in the jungles of the Congo.
So, I guess it’s back to the drawing board for some scientists. Thank goodness tenure provides job security.
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