On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:13:41 PM UTC,
littor...@gmail.com wrote:
We descend from gibbons
:-DDD
When great & lesser apes split,the were no gibbons yet
The ape lineage split from Old-World monkeys
around 29 ma (but maybe as late as 23 ma --
the estimates come from timing DNA changes
-- notoriously unreliable).
Large apes split from "lesser apes" (i.e. gibbons)
around 16 ma.
Which came first?
It's agreed that the new ape taxon underwent
drastic morphological changes -- the spine
became much more central; the tail was lost;
the chest went from deep and narrow to broad
and flat; the scapulae moved from the sides of
the chest to its back; the shoulder joints
acquired a new prominence at the top corners
of the chest.
All these changes came at a cost.
What was their benefit?
A large ape that could climb a little more
efficiently? Or a small ape that was enabled to
exploit a new and immensely powerful form of
locomotion?
The brachiating speed and skill that we see in
gibbons is the reason for the success of the
taxon. That was the evolutionary driving force.
Analogies are hard to find in nature. New
forms of locomotion, requiring substantial
morphological change, are rare. (It's amazing
that there are two quite recent ones in our
own taxon.) But rough analogies can be made
with the skills acquired by groups of humans
from training over many years. You don't
become good at ice-skating by putting on
skates in order to cross meadows. You don't
become good at golf by playing cricket or
baseball. The big bucks (in evolutionary terms
for species and humans in medals) are for
those who, at great cost, develop the supreme
skills. Those who mess about at lower levels
experience no cost, and get few benefits.
Larger apes that can brachiate -- at a level far
below that of gibbons -- can find a niche in a
forest. But they are a derived species with
derived abilities.
https://www.amnh.org/about/press-center/research-sizes-up-last-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-apes
All fine -- until you reach the "aquaboreal" nonsense.
My little boy, can't you even write the word "aquarboreal"??
It's really not difficult: aqua=water, arbor=tree.
A hyphen would be better: "aqua-arboreal".
But why are neologisms invariably horrible?
It's probably connected with the fact that
99.99% are meaningless. Modern apes
(including gibbons) get involved with water for
maybe about (on average) one hour every
year; and nearly always regret it.
Ancestral apes (and all apes before hominins)
were much the same.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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