Okay so if humans are more related to apes, from what did apes evolve from?

Question

If humans evolved from a common ancestor that is shared by apes, chimpanzees, etc what did that common ancestor evolve from? What is the transitional proof? Sure I have seen actual transitional bones in a science lab (my teacher's prize possesion). So does that mean that the first prehistoric ape like fossil just appeared like that. If not then what did it evolve from?

Answer 1

Read " The Ancestors Tale ", by Richard Dawkins and know that all is transitional and all the way back to the universal common ancestor.

And I am telling you, we do not have such precision. We leave absolutism up to religious nut-bars.

Pierolopithecis catlaicius A ape like creature found recently near Barcelona. You could have found out that much.

Answer 2

You're treating it as if "this" was a "pre-ape", "this" was the first ape and "this" was the first human.  It doesn't work that way - there are no sharp delineations.

We're seeing a speciation occurring right now - the common ancestor of the horse and donkey is splitting into two separate species.  Some hybrid pairs still produce fertile offspring, some produce sterile offspring and some mate with no offspring.  So some individuals are still almost all "Common Ancestor", some are true horses, some are true donkeys and some are more horse than CA or more donkey than CA.

It's a line from black to white, with most individuals being some shade of gray, and this is what most species are at all times.  You've seen transitional bones in a science lab?  You see a transitional individual in the mirror every morning.  We're all transitional between our ancestors and our descendants - between Homo sapiens sapiens and what comes next.  None of us are pure Cro-Magnon, or pure Heidelberg, and none of us are Homo futurensis, we're all in-betweens - transitionals.  You're not going to see a fossil with pure common ancestor here and pure human there - it never lived.

BTW, apes are members of the Hominoidea superfamily, which includes humans so, yes, we're VERY closely related to ourselves.

Answer 3

nice question>>  

of course everything evolved from a common ancestor with is the single celled organism that we call today a bacterium. and also using Lamarck's theory on use and disuse and also Darwin's theory on the origin of spices, we can trace back the ancestors of the monkeys to the bacteria so does any other living creature.

nice question "wisdom begins in wonder"

thank you -senciolicious

Answer 4

We didn't evolve from the current specicies of apes existing today, we evolved from a common ancestor which was an ape.

Apes evolved from another mammal which we're not sure, but it might be further up the biological tree of life.

In the end, believe it or not, scientists believe all life evolved from an ancient bacteria.

Answer 5

Humans. Its like a paradox...wait.. never mind that was planet of the apes...

Answer 6

From the evolution of cells. From there on it has been all about the "survival of the fittest". Check the Darwin Theory about evolution of Man. It's a very interesting read.

Answer 7

primates evolved from dermoptera(flying lemurs)which in turn evolved from scandentia(tree shrews)

Answer 8

bacteria, ha, like everything else.

Answer 9

Apes evolved from some animal like an old world monkey more that 20 million years ago.  Proconsul or a close relative was probably the ancestor but it is hard to be sure of the exact ancestor.

Answer 10

You will not like this short answer since I suspect a semi-fundamentalist  bent to your question.

You can safely call the original earthian life form 'Archaea',

a very primitive form of life that evolved into either prokaryotes or eukaryotes. It used to be called bacteria, but science learns and adjusts to it's original, miss assumptions like we are all supposed to do. This life form is so basic that it could evolve, therefore, to be either plant or animal and obviously evolved to be both, thankfully, not at the same time..

I realize that religious literature makes no reference to this life form but neither do such popular missives mention, Japan.