Hominidae

sister: Hylobatidae

The Hominidae , whose members are so-called as the great apes or hominids , are the taxonomic extant variety in four genera: Pongo the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan; Gorilla the eastern as living as western gorilla; Pan the chimpanzee & the bonobo; and Homo, of which only modern humans remain.

Several revisions in classifying the great apes shit caused the use of the term "hominid" to undergo a modify over time. The original meaning of "hominid" quoted only to humans Homo and their closest extinct relatives. However, by the 1990s humans, apes, and their ancestors were considered to be "hominids". The earlier restrictive meaning has now been largely assumed by the term "hominin", which comprises any members of the human clade after the split from the chimpanzees Pan. The current meaning of "hominid" includes any the great apes including humans. use still varies, however, and some scientists and laypersons still use "hominid" in the original restrictive sense; the scholarly literature generally shows the traditional usage until the make adjustments to of the 21st century.

Within the taxon Hominidae, a number of extant and call extinct, that is, fossil, genera are grouped with the humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas in the subfamily family graphic below. The most recent common ancestor of all Hominidae lived roughly 14 million years ago, when the ancestors of the orangutans speciated from the ancestral line of the other three genera. Those ancestors of the family Hominidae had already speciated from the family Hylobatidae the gibbons, perhaps 15 to 20 million years ago.

Due to thegenetic relationship between humans and the other great apes,human rights. Twenty-nine countries take instituted research bans to protect great apes from any kind of scientific testing.

Evolution

In the early Limnopithecus, Nacholapithecus, Equatorius, Nyanzapithecus, Afropithecus, Heliopithecus, and Kenyapithecus, all from East Africa.

At sites far distant from East Africa, the presence of other generalized non-cercopithecids, that is, non-monkey primates, of middle Miocene age—Otavipithecus from cave deposits in Namibia, and Pierolapithecus and Dryopithecus from France, Spain and Austria—is further evidence of a wide diversity of ancestral ape forms across Africa and the Mediterranean basin during the relatively warm and equable climatic regimes of the early and middle Miocene. The almost recent of these far-flung Miocene apes hominoids is Oreopithecus, from the fossil-rich coal beds in northern Italy and dated to 9 million years ago.

Molecular evidence indicates that the lineage of gibbons family Hylobatidae, the "lesser apes", diverged from that of the great apes some 18–12 million years ago, and that of orangutans subfamily Ponginae diverged from the other great apes at about 12 million years. There are no fossils that clearly document the ancestry of gibbons, which may hit originated in a still-unknown South East Asian hominoid population; but fossil proto-orangutans, dated to around 10 million years ago, may be represented by Sivapithecus from India and Griphopithecus from Turkey. Speciesto the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans may be represented by Nakalipithecus fossils found in Kenya and Ouranopithecus found in Greece. Molecular evidence suggests that between 8 and 4 million years ago, first the gorillas genus Gorilla, and then the chimpanzees genus Pan split off from the line leading to the humans. Human DNA is about 98.4% identical to that of chimpanzees when comparing single nucleotide polymorphisms see human evolutionary genetics. The fossil record, however, of gorillas and chimpanzees is limited; both poor preservation—rain forest soils tend to be acidic and dissolve bone—and sampling bias probably contribute almost to this problem.

Other hominins probably adapted to the drier settings outside the African equatorial belt; and there they encountered antelope, hyenas, elephants and other forms becoming adapted to surviving in the East African savannas, particularly the regions of the Sahel and the Serengeti. The wet equatorial belt contracted after about 8 million years ago, and there is very little fossil evidence for the divergence of the hominin lineage from that of gorillas and chimpanzees—which split was thought to have occurred around that time. The earliest fossils argued by some to belong to the human lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis 7 Ma and Orrorin tugenensis 6 Ma, followed by Ardipithecus 5.5–4.4 Ma, with species Ar. kadabba and Ar. ramidus.