By comparing the remains of Saadanius with other ancient primates, the researchers put the date of the evolutionary split at between 29m and 27m years ago.
Molecular studies indicate that the Pinaceae had already made their evolutionary split from the Araucariaceae and the rest of the conifers by this point.
It also implies that the evolutionary split between lycopsids and all other vascular plants occurred very early in their colonization of terrestrial environments.
The new date for the original evolutionary split also suggests the possibility that climate may have played an even greater role in the story than previously thought.
How they cracked it The research team digitally generated three possible ancestral skull shapes that corresponded to three predicted potential "evolutionary split" times between the two lineages.
Then, about 400,000 years ago, H. heidelbergensis underwent an evolutionary split: north of the Mediterranean it developed into the Neanderthals, while to the south, in Africa, it became us, modern humans.
The species, Ankarapithecus meteai, a 60-pound fruit-eating ape, roamed the woodlands of central Turkey long before the evolutionary split that separated humans from other two-legged primates.
Use of this concept, together with a reanalysis of the fossil record, moved the estimated time of the evolutionary split between apes and human ancestors forward to as recently as about 5 mya.
So are we standing on the threshold of a new understanding or a new historic divide, comparable to the evolutionary split that occurred when a group of pioneer hominids thousands of years ago turned their backs forever on their African homeland?
We propose a deep evolutionary split in this superfamily, predating the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor, between the SMP-like proteins, which act on lipids endogenous to the cell, and the BPI-like proteins (including the Takeout-like proteins of arthropods), which act on exogenous lipids.
What are we learning about the evolutionary split between apes and monkeys?
