Chimps creep closer yet
Chimpanzees may be more closely related to humans than to any other primate, new genetic evidence suggests.
“We all know that humans and chimps are extremely close genetically,” says study coauthor Soojin Yi, an evolutionary biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The two species diverged from a common ancestor from 5 million to 7 million years ago and have 95 to 98 percent of their DNA in common, previous research has established.