Abstract
It is commonly believed that the australopithecines are more closely related to humans than to African apes. This view is hardly compatible with the biomolecular data which place theHomo/Pan split at the beginning of the australopithecine period. Nothing in the fossil hominid morphology precludes the possibility that some australopithecines were ancestral to gorillas or chimpanzees and others to humans.
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Verhaegen, M.J.B. African ape ancestry. Hum. Evol. 5, 295–297 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02437246
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02437246