The DNA changes at these sites, researchers believe, mark the turning points in recent human evolution as the populations on each continent diverged from one another.
They also compared the number of mutations each species had acquired to determine how long ago they had diverged from one another.
Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) performed during the early 21st century showed that black bears, brown bears, and polar bears diverged from one another some 4 million–5 million years ago, early in the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago).
And the story of the origin of the anus is actually a story about how animals evolved, diverged from one another, and became sophisticated creatures.
Within a few thousand years, many of the ancient lineages had already diverged from one another, meaning that people from one group were not having babies with people from another (or at least, their mothers weren't moving around, since we're talking about mitochondrial DNA).
These breeds diverged from one another 400 years ago.
In the early 20th century the breeders on either side of the Atlantic had created different breed standards for the Cocker Spaniel and the breed gradually diverged from one another, with the two becoming noticeably different by the 1920s.
These subpopulations have diverged from one another over time because Pacific angelsharks do not undertake long migratory movements outside of their preferred home areas, and deep waters serve as effective geographical barriers to population mixing.
These genes appear to have diverged from two ancestor genes, since OsBgal5, OsBgal12, OsBgal14, and OsBgal15 have sequences and gene structures that are similar to each other, as do OsBgal10 and OsBgal11.
