A new study reveals that the human hand is actually more primitive than the hands of our closest primate ancestors: chimpanzees. The study determined that while the proportions of the human hand closely resemble those of the last common ancestor of chimps and humans which lived some 6 to 7 mya, the hands of chimps and orangutans have actually evolved quite a bit.
Sergio Almécija, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University's Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology and the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University, who headed the study notes that the results indicate that because the overall hand proportions of humans are largely primitive, when the first members of the human lineage started to use and produce complex stone tools in a systematic way, "their hands were already pretty much like ours today." If correct, this means that the belief that the modern human hand is the result of more recent changes necessary for stone tool-making is incorrect.
The study is published in the latest issue of the on-line journal Nature Communications, part of the same group that publishes the prestigious science journal Nature.
The entire study can be read here: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/15...comms8717.html
Sergio Almécija, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University's Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology and the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University, who headed the study notes that the results indicate that because the overall hand proportions of humans are largely primitive, when the first members of the human lineage started to use and produce complex stone tools in a systematic way, "their hands were already pretty much like ours today." If correct, this means that the belief that the modern human hand is the result of more recent changes necessary for stone tool-making is incorrect.
The study is published in the latest issue of the on-line journal Nature Communications, part of the same group that publishes the prestigious science journal Nature.
The entire study can be read here: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/15...comms8717.html
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