An Evolutionary Tree Depicting the Relationships Among Living Apes, Ardi, and Modern Humans (IMAGE)

New York University

An Evolutionary Tree Depicting the Relationships Among Living Apes, Ardi, and Modern Humans

Caption

An evolutionary tree depicting the relationships among living apes, Ardi, and modern humans. Each branch on the tree represents a species and their intersections represent their common ancestors. The dots represent hypothetical evolutionary changes associated with the evolution of ground-living adaptations in the common ancestor of African apes and humans as well as the evolution of bipedalism, which is supported by the analysis. This shows that human bipedalism evolved from an ancestral form similar to the living African apes.

Credit

Thomas Prang, NYU

Usage Restrictions

Use in conjunction with this study only

License

Licensed content

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.