Evolution from monkeys

[Xamonas Chegwé]

http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates ... imates.htm

To Xamonas

The reference above is a summary of primate evolution coming from the anthropology department of Palomar University. It very cleary and unambiguously states that apes evolved from monkeys early in the Miocene epoch.

Now, there is a major difference between new world and old world monkeys. Apes are descended from, and more closely related to old world monkeys, not new world.

The time line goes..
Prosimians
Primitive monkeys
Split into old world and new world monkeys
Old world monkeys giving rise to apes
Later apes
Hominids.

I can find web pages that agree with me too! http://tolweb.org/Catarrhini/16293

As you can see, the Catarrhini parvorder is split into two.

One branch contains the Cercopithecidae (Old-World Monkeys) and the other contains Apes and Gibbons. There is no overlap.

Anything in the Catarrhini is either in the Cercopithecidae (ie. is an OWM) or it is not. And everything in the Cercopithecidae is the descendant of a single common Cercopithecidae ancestor - likewise, everything else is not a descendant of that ancestor and so is not an Old-World Monkey.

The web page you linked to is aimed at a less academic audience (ie. it is pop-sci) and uses language in an inexact manner. In particular, it uses the term "Monkeys" to refer to refer to ancient primates other than those in the Cercopithecidae and Platyrrhini. This is incorrect. The scientific definition of monkeys is exactly these groups and no others.


Feel free to continue in the belief that you are right if it makes you feel happy. In a way, you sort of are, but only if you have no proper understanding of taxonomy and are happy to assume whichever vague, non-scientific definition of "monkey" (or any other term for that matter) suits your argument the better.

[Animavore]

[cronus]

Depends on what makes us 'us' doesn't it? Rather than say we are biological beings our intrinsic nature might be viewed as portable and memetic in origin such that other species far removed, even machines, can emulate basic traits that make 'us' us and further down the line might view human beings as unnecessary anachronisms. Maybe even networking insects can be altered with some bio-chemical interventions to behave in a way reminiscent of 'us' and build things for us far more efficiently than a 3d printer say?

[Blind groper]

Xamonas

Shame on you!

You used a respectable reference in an attempt to present a bullshit argument. The reference did not say what you said.

It showed a lineage in which old world monkeys gave rise to apes, which is what I have said all along. Not, of course, modern old world monkeys giving rise to apes. Duh! Ancient old world monkeys giving rise to apes.

Ie. Apes evolving from monkeys. QED.

[epepke]

Yeah. Or we are monkeys. Or apes. Or whatever. These are words, and categories don't work the way Descartes thought.

Explaining things, though, isn't going to help. The anti-evolutionist stuff isn't rational in the first place, and it isn't really based on ignorance or confusion (though there is plenty of ignorance and confusion). It's a lot of things, which might be interesting to discuss, but it isn't that. It can't be fixed by knowledge and rational statements, except in a certain way, which way doesn't happen much.

[mistermack]

Mistermack

No, you cannot say apes evolved from humans, because all apes except humans evolved from earlier, more primitive apes, not humans.

You can say whatever you like. What is happening is that people are confusing the phenotype with the actual animal. So we restrict the word ''human'' to a particular body type. Upright, big brain etc.
And monkey to a particular body type. And Ape to a particular body type.

You are just confusing modern monkeys with the ancestors of monkeys, apes and humans, because the body plan is similar.
It's really a false technique. Apes AND monkeys evolved from ANCESTRAL apes and monkeys, which just happened to be the same animal, and happened to have a monkey-like body plan.

They weren't monkeys, they were ancestral monkeys. And ancestral apes. Same thing.
So it's just as valid to say that modern monkeys evolved from ancestral apes, as it is to say that they evolved from ancestral monkeys. Or ancestral humans. You're talking about the same animal.

Just as you often hear top evolutionary scientists say ''we ARE apes'', the same can equally apply to apes and monkeys. To say '' apes ARE monkeys '' would be just as valid. And vice-versa.

Just because the monkey-like phenotype came first, we settle on that as a name for the ancestor, but it's no more valid than any other name.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Xamonas

Shame on you!

You used a respectable reference in an attempt to present a bullshit argument. The reference did not say what you said.

It showed a lineage in which old world monkeys gave rise to apes, which is what I have said all along. Not, of course, modern old world monkeys giving rise to apes. Duh! Ancient old world monkeys giving rise to apes.

Ie. Apes evolving from monkeys. QED.

Like I said, you do not understand taxonomy. The source I quoted does not show that at all. There were no "ancient old world monkeys" as you term them, only ancient old world catarrhini primates that predate monkeys.

Get this into your head.

1. A monkey is a primate of the Haplorrhini suborder and simian infraorder, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey, but excluding apes and humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey

2. The Old World monkeys or Cercopithecidae are a group of primates, falling in the superfamily Cercopithecoidea in the clade (or parvorder) of Catarrhini. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_World_monkey

3. New World monkeys are the five families of primates that are found in Central and South America and portions of Mexico: Callitrichidae, Cebidae, Aotidae, Pitheciidae, and Atelidae. The five families are ranked together as the Platyrrhini parvorder and the Ceboidea superfamily, which are essentially synonymous since Ceboidea is the only living platyrrhine superfamily. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_monkey

These are the only clades which are legitimately called Monkeys. All monkeys, living and extinct, fall into one of these groups. All earlier ancestor species of monkeys, which include the Catarrhini ancestors of the apes were not fucking monkeys, no matter how closely they may have resembled them.


All of your bullshit arguments stem from stretching the definition of "Monkey" to include species that do not belong there in order to "prove" that your waffle is correct despite the entire zoological world disagreeing with you.

Now, kindly fuck off, as I have better things to do with my pixels than waste them on stubborn inanity.

[Blind groper]

No Xamonas

You fail to understand the terminology. The word 'monkey' is not a taxonomic classification. It is a word used by common people to describe primates with certain characteristics. Those characteristics are shared by many living species, and many extinct species. Like the term 'hominid' includes a lot of species now extinct, so the term 'monkey' includes a lot of animals long extinct. Just because an animal became extinct many years ago does not stop it being a monkey.

Current apes are genetically more similar to old world monkeys than they are to new world monkeys. Indeed, old world monkeys are genetically more similar to apes than they are to new world monkeys.

We cannot measure the DNA of ancient fossils, sadly, but we can compare the grosser characteristics. Proconsul is an intermediate fossil between ape and old world monkey, which tells you with a high probability that apes and old world monkeys have a common origin.

The word 'monkey' is not a scientific term, but a common word. However, primatologists are fully aware of what it means, and will use it where appropriate to communicate to non primatologists. Animals with characteristics that make them 'monkeys' are found in fossil form well before Proconsul. Proconsul can be called either monkey or ape, depending on how you look at it. Fossils older than Proconsul are all monkeys. There are no ape fossils older than Proconsul. It is very clear cut, regardless of how you try to twist the argument, that apes evolved from earlier animals that would be described, quite accurately, as monkeys.

It is not appropriate, and certainly not correct, to argue that the ancestors of apes, which became extinct a long time ago, were a little bit different to modern monkeys and therefore were not monkeys. New world monkeys difference to old world is far more marked than the difference between apes and their ancestors, and we still call them monkeys.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Once your argument degenerates to splitting semantic hairs,

[Blind groper]

Xamonas

You are correct that a lot of this is semantics. But you are wrong, wrong, wrong. An ancestor of a monkey is, guess what, a monkey - unless you go back so far it becomes a prosimion. Apes are descended from monkeys, by any reasonable definition of the word 'monkey'.

What you are ignoring is that this word actually describes a wide range of genotypes. Old world and new world monkeys are quite different from each other genetically, but are still both called monkeys. If we were totally consistent, and used the word as an exact scientific sense, we would call apes and humans monkeys as well, since the range of genotypes called monkeys is so wide. But the use of the word is limited, in the world of extant primates, to old world and new world monkeys. If we accept that as the range, then a hell of a lot of extinct primates will also fall under the umbrella of the word 'monkey', and that umbrella will include the ancestors of the apes.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Xamonas

You are correct that a lot of this is semantics. But you are wrong, wrong, wrong. An ancestor of a monkey is, guess what, a monkey - unless you go back so far it becomes a prosimion. Apes are descended from monkeys, by any reasonable definition of the word 'monkey'.

I see. And who gets to decide which definition of "monkey" is "reasonable"? The zoological community? Or your arse? I see which candidate you have chosen.

What you are ignoring is that this word actually describes a wide range of genotypes. Old world and new world monkeys are quite different from each other genetically, but are still both called monkeys. If we were totally consistent, and used the word as an exact scientific sense, we would call apes and humans monkeys as well, since the range of genotypes called monkeys is so wide. But the use of the word is limited, in the world of extant primates, to old world and new world monkeys. If we accept that as the range, then a hell of a lot of extinct primates will also fall under the umbrella of the word 'monkey', and that umbrella will include the ancestors of the apes.

More semantic waffle. There are two clades of organism that are referred to as monkeys by zoologists (again, for some perverse reason, I choose to accept their definition above that pulled from betwixt your chubby butt-cheeks). Apes belong to, and are evolved from, neither of these. They are closely related to the Old-World Monkeys but they are not descended from them.

What you repeatedly fail to grasp is that early monkeys and apes are defined (scientifically defined, that is, not defined by common usage, which often calls chimpanzees, gorillas and fans of opposing football teams "monkeys") by their differences from one another - which are mostly skeletal. The common Catarrhini ancestors of OWMs and Apes had developed the shared characteristics of both (hence their inclusion in Catarrhini) but the defining characteristics of neither (hence their exclusion from both "monkeys" and "apes").

Common Fucking Ancestor ≠ Evolved From Each Other!

[pErvinalia]

Fuck monkeys! I'm a bacteria!

[JimC]

Fuck monkeys! I'm a bacteria!

The Fuck Monkeys would be a good name for a band...

[Sean Hayden]

[JimC]

In some ways, the main confusion is using the name monkeys, which is not a legitimate term of classification, in a broad sense, covering two distinct clades and the ancestral forms of at least one of those clades.

Perhaps we could designate the New World clade as the Monkees?