A new analysis of hominid phylogeny just appeared in J.Mol.Evol (35:32-43)
Horai et al.
Man's place in hominoidea revealed by mitochondrial DNA geneology.
The highlights are:
1) They compared sequences for chimp (both species (?)),
human, gorilla, orang, and siamang (and gibbon?
-- just have notes in front of me)
using 4759nt of mtDNA (ND1 --> ATPase 6).
2) Chimp-human clade.
3) CH clade "26+/-9.4 times more parsimonious" according
to maximum parsimony.
4) CH clade "10^23 (e^53.9)times more likely" according
to maximum likelihood.
5) Gorilla estimated to have diverged 7.7+/-0.7 Myears ago,
Chimp and human 4.7+/- 0.5 Myears ago.
I really don't have the background to critically analyze the paper.
Did they do their analysis correctly? Are the numbers really as good
as they claim? Can this be considered bedrock proof for a chimp-human
clade?
Keith "Bonzo" Robison
Harvard University
Program in Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
