Orangutans on the island of Borneo descend from a relatively small number of ancestors who apparently squeezed through a rough patch about 176,000 years ago, according to the broadest genetic analysis to date of their species.
BOTTLENECKERS In an unexpected twist, Borneo’s species of orangutan turns out to have survived a population bottleneck some 176,000 years ago, possibly when a worldwide cold snap trapped the apes in a scrap of surviving rain forest.
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