On 29-12-2011 0:16, Cousin Ricky wrote:
> Warp<war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
>>    It's actually it's wronger than that. According to cladistics(*) humans
>> did not "evolve from monkeys". Instead, humans and monkeys have a common
>> ancestor species. This ancestor species probably looked more like a monkey
>> than a human, but was still relatively different from either.
>>
>>    (Also, apes are more closely related to humans than monkeys. It seems that
>> creationists and other people who want to mock the theory of evolution
>> deliberately use the more distantly related monkeys more as a mockery than
>> anything else. According to cladistics humans and apes have a common ancestor
>> species, which in turn has a common ancestor species with monkeys.)
>
> Please find attached a simplified cladogram.

reading a bit more on wikipedia (possibly not the most reliable source, 
but it will have to do for this year) that cladogram is not correct 
[anymore]. there could have been an oval around the lesser apes, great 
apes and humans. 'ape' is nowadays used for that entire clade. even 
better, humans are great apes nowadays. monkeys still are not a clade as 
the humans have to be left out. in short your ovals should intersect. i 
added a correction for the great apes only.

this sort of things happen more often when names are used that date back 
to when we did not know yet how the genetic relationships were. we have 
it e.g. where birds are dinosaurs, dinosaurs (apart from birds) are 
reptiles but birds are not reptiles.

-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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