Chimpanzees in the new
2005/09/01 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia
Many of us like chimpanzees. They seem to us close, rare and mischievous, like children. And we like to know things about them. It often seems to us that we learn something from us by reading research on chimpanzees. Somehow, we cannot resist the temptation to compare our species with chimpanzees.
Scientists are not very different. In addition, in medicine, genetics and many other fields, comparison has made great strides. Monkeys are also widely used in experiments...
Two news related to chimpanzees have been published today. On the one hand they have decoded the chimpanzee genome (in the tacha! ). On the other hand, the fossil of a chimpanzee is first discovered.
So far no chimpanzee fossils have been found, since the environmental conditions in which these monkeys live are not very suitable for fossilizing their bones. However, this time in Kenya they find the fossilized tooth of a 500,000 year old chimpanzee.
Both fossil and genome data are of great use to illustrate the evolution of chimpanzees. The explanations will also be heard or read at ease and, in addition, surely at that time they will also compare with human evolution, how not!
Photo: Science Museum of Minnesota
