Where is the fossil evidence for ape evolution?

Question

Evolutionists have been desperately looking for evidence of human evolution, but has anyone ever looked for ape's ancestor? How can they claim man and ape had a common ancestor if they have no idea who the ape's ancestor was?

Answer 1

Given, one brief answer won't seduce a young earth creationist. You'd have to learn some science, examine the evidence and challenge your beliefs. The alternative is "The bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it."

Monkey's and apes parted company about 25 million years ago. We split off from the apes 6-8 million years ago and from the chimpanzee line some 3 million years ago.

Humans did not evolve from modern apes, but humans and modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no longer exists. Because we share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas, we have many anatomical, genetic, biochemical, and even behavioral similarities with these African great apes. We are less similar to the Asian apes--orangutans and gibbons--and even less similar to monkeys, because we share common ancestors with these groups in the more distant past.

The leading contender for the last common ancestor of ape and humans is 13 million year old Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, found recently in Spain.

The hominids include humans and the apes. They are part of the family Hominidae, of the order Primate. Humans did not "descend from the apes" We share a common ancestor with them and are considered "cousins." Chimpanzees, our closest relative, share a 99% match in DNA. In protein sequencing, the match is closer, no differences at all.  When man's protein sequencing is compared to gorillas there is only two differences in the match with hemoglobin, red blood cells and amino acids. Lastly the antgen-antibody reaction for humans is 97% from chimpanzees compared to 50% for baboons. In other words we're related. DNA is today used to show how closely people are related (as in determining paternity) and to determine if people were at a crime scene (as a means to determine guilt or innocence). It also is used to determine how long ago species split off from each other.

Why do you use the word "desperately"? It's an exciting time in anthropology.Our predecessors Kenyanthropus platyops,

Ardipithecus ramidus, Gracile Australopithecines, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus anamensis

Australopithecus garhi, Robust Australopithicines (Paranthropus)

Australopithecus aethiopicus. Australopithecus boisei. ustralopithecus robustus , Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus. Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens are known and dated. In fact we're started to recover DNA to understand the genome of the Neandertahs.

Finally I ran into this interesting comment:

"Anyone worried about atheism should be more concerned about creationism...By saying that only one religious interpretation is correct and universal, creationism typically is a rejection of every other religious interpretation. For example, young-earth creationists reject the religious interpretation that the universe is more than 10,000 years old (Sarfati 2004), and design theorists reject the idea that God has guided evolution (Dembski 1996). For people whose beliefs about God differ from those of a creationist, that creationism might just as well be atheistic."

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA...

Answer 2

Your basic premise is wrong.  We do have fossils of the ape's ancestors.  Go to a museum or read a book other than the bible from time to time and you'll learn about it.

Answer 3

http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/course...

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/anthro/prog...

http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/9721/9721...

http://web.missouri.edu/~wardcv/pdfs/quo...

Answer 4

It is true that there are no recent non hominid (hominin) ape fossils except some chimpanzee teeth found a few years ago that were dated to about 500,000 years ago.  The only thing remarkable about them is that they were found in the rift valley so the chimp ancestors cohabited with relatively modern hominins or closer relatives of modern humans.  They know with great certainty that we shared an ancestor with chimps about 5 to 7 million years ago.  The relative rarity of hominid fossils makes it difficult to determine whether a particular fossil is an ancestor or just a close relative of the actual ancestor.  It is quite possible that Sahelanthropus tchadensis is the common ancestor of humans and chimps.  It is more certain that others like Proconsul africanus are ancestors of modern apes or are close relatives of the ancestors of modern apes (including humans).  

There were several types of apes in the Miocene (over 5.3 million years ago).   http://www.primates.com/history/