The point is a convergence of evidence. Any one
piece of evidence can support a conclusion, but
it's when numerous pieces converge -- all point to
one species or time period -- when it really makes
a difference.


#1. Chromosome fusion

Chimps have 48 chromosomes, humans have 46.
Pinpoint when this difference occurred and you
have an excellent candidate for LCA.

#2. Baculum

Chimps have one, humans do not. Unfortunately
they don't appear to preserve very well so it
would be relatively easy to "Prove" whether a
population had one -- you only need to find a
single specimen -- while it's difficult to disprove it.

#3. Fossils

Fossils can be dated, usually, and they are <ahem>
"Rock Solid" evidence for the presence of a species.
In other words, it says "We were here!"

#4. DNA

No, there is no molecular clock. I'm not talking about
molecular dating. I'm speaking of recovering DNA from
fossils. We can examine it and determine if it looks more
like human or maybe more like Chimp. Given even a
few populations, we could get a clear picture of which
species -- and at what point in time -- divergence had
taken place, past tense.

: paleontologists can only hope to recover recognizable DNA
: sequences from creatures that lived and died within the
: past 6.8 million years

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/possible-dinosaur-dna-has-been-found/

The exaggerated age for human/chimp convergence is
ordinarily given at 6 million years. And like I said, that's
exaggerated! So the LCA is all but certain to be well
under the cut off point.

...Yet they deny DNA from even Naledi, when there's an
abundance of samples and older DNA has been
recovered under similar circumstances.





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