Question

Check out the picture of the Primate Family Tree from the Human Origins exhibit below:

1. Using groups identified on the tree, what is an example of a commonly named paraphyletic group of primates? What makes this a paraphyletic group?

2. Using groups identified on the tree, what is an example of a commonly named monophyletic group of primates? What makes this a monophyletic group?

3. Based on the tree, how are humans and chimpanzees evolutionarily related? Explain.

Answer 1

1. Firstly you need to know what actually is a primate, so the mammals (warm blooded animals) called primates includes the lower primate (lemurs , lorises , and torsiers) and the higher primates (monkeys , apes and humans).

Now after knowing primates you need to know about a group of primates, a group of monkeys , regardless of which species is called a troop. This name also applies some of the other primate species like baboons.

The example of commonly named paraphyletic group of primates is, Monkeys comprises two monophylectic groups, new world monkeys and old world monkeys, but is paraphyletic because it excludes hominoids superfamily hominoidea, also descendents of the common ancestor simiformes . ''apes'' as a whole, and the ''great apes'' in particular are parapheletic because they exclude humans.

2. Monophyletic groups include all orgamisms in a taxa that share a most common recent ancestor , including the ancestor . If only some members of a group sharing a common recent ancestor are included, then they are considered paraphylectic. 2. Birds , reptiles, and turtles are all thought to share a common ancestor.

And answer to your third part that how we are related to chimpanzees is

Chimpanzees are genetically closest to humans, and in fact chimpanzees share about 98.6% of our DNA we share ore of our DNA with cxhimpanzees that with monkeys or other groups, or even with other great apes! We also both play, have complex emotions and intelligence, and very similar physical makeup. That also include face cut.

It confirms that our closest living biological relatives are chimpanzees and also bonobos, with whom we share many traits. But we did not evolve directly from any primates living toay. DNA also shows that our species and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor species that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.