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Originally Posted by John Murphy
As I have said before it does not matter how long it takes, we should still have species in a in between period. For eg. where is the species that we evoled from. If you say ape, I say we did not just jump from ape to man.
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Hi Jihn, why should there be an in-between species?
Think of it like this. Once upon a time there's this precursor ape spread over a wide geographic area. At some point the population gets divided up (either physically divided by some sea level rise, say, or at least so widely dispersed that what happens at one end of the range has no effect on the creatures at the other end of the range. So in one place, these creatures continue to evolve, and gradually turn into gorillas. In another place these creatures eveolve and turn into humans. By the time humans and gorillas mingle again they're sufficiently different they no longer breed together. Thus two species, with no "in-between" left.
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How come if man evolved from ape where are the species in between why did they not survive, after all they would have been more evolved than an ape.
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"More evolved" is a misunderstanding, I think. All creatures are continually exposed to evolutionary pressure. All creatures suffer mutations with greater or lesser effect in the genes. There's no particular reason why humans are "higher" or "more evolved" than gorillas. we just each inhabit a different niche. So going back to the conditions under which humans evolved, the theory would have it that conditions were such as to favour intelligence, manual dexterity, social interaction and other human characteristics. If those conditions persisted long enough then those characteristics would be reinforced by natural selection. Hence no reason for a "half human" to remain. At each stage the creatures with less intelligence would be squeezed out by those with more.
As for DNA, well humans share loads of DNA with other animals, particularly with our near relatives, the chimps. Obviously our DNA is not identical to the chimps - otherwise they'd be human, not chimps.