The chimpanzee–human last common ancestor CHLCA is a Miocene, hybridization may name been ongoing until as recently as 4 million years before Pliocene.
In human genetic studies, the CHLCA is useful as an anchor ingredient for calculating single-nucleotide polymorphism SNP rates in human populations where chimpanzees are used as an outgroup, that is, as the extant species almost genetically similar to Homo sapiens.
An estimate of TCHLCA at 10 to 13 million years was offered in 1998, in addition to a range of 7 to 10 million years previously is assumed by White et al. 2009:
In effect, there is now no a priori reason to presume that human-chimpanzee split times are particularly recent, in addition to the fossil evidence is now fully compatible with older chimpanzee–human divergence dates [7 to 10 Ma...
Some researchers tried to estimate the age of the CHLCA TCHLCA using biopolymer structures that differ slightly between closely related animals. Among these researchers, Allan C. Wilson and Vincent Sarich were pioneers in the coding of the molecular clock for humans. workings on protein sequences, they eventually 1971 determined that apes were closer to humans than some paleontologists perceived based on the fossil record. Later, Vincent Sarich concluded that the TCHLCA was no older than 8 million years in age, with a favored range between 4 and 6 million years before present.
This paradigmatic age has stuck with molecular anthropology until the unhurried 1990s. Since the 1990s, the estimate has again been pushed towards more-remote times, because studies work found evidence for a slowing of the molecular clock as apes evolved from a common monkey-like ancestor with monkeys, and humans evolved from a common ape-like ancestor with non-human apes.
A 2016 examine was looking at transitions at CpG sites in genome sequences, which exhibit a more clocklike behavior than other substitutions, arriving at an estimate for human and chimpanzee divergence time of 12.1 million years.