Authors: Malcolm A FergusonSmith
Publish Date: 2006/04/26
Volume: 119, Issue: 6, Pages: 669-670
Abstract
A fascination with evolution is a common characteristic of all biologists and especially that part that deals with our closest animal relatives the primates It seems that this interest in evolutionary biology has also infected the general public most of whom have heard about Darwin and the controversial views of those who espouse creationism and intelligent design The science that links humans and chimpanzees with their common ancestor some 5 million years ago is now well established The work of palaeontologists anthropologists comparative anatomists and geneticists during the past 100 years has been complemented by more recent studies of molecular biologists that reveal evidence from subtle changes in the molecular structure of proteins mitochondrial and nuclear DNA which can be used to build family trees of all extant animals and predict much about their origins from extinct ancestors One branch of evolutionary biology compares the chromosome
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