The jokes write themselves!

[theweaselking]

One of the most detailed comparisons yet of human and chimp DNA shows that the split between the two species was a long, complicated affair that may even have featured an evolutionary version of breakup sex.

Previous research has shown chimpanzees and humans are sister species, split from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. The new study goes further by looking at about 800 times more DNA than earlier efforts. That extra data make it possible to determine when and how the split happened.

"For the first time, we're able to see the details written out in the DNA," said Eric Lander, one of the collaborators on the study. "What they tell us at the least is that the human-chimp speciation was very unusual."

Unusual, indeed. The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines.

That genetic collaboration then gave rise to two separate branches — one leading to humans and the other to chimps.

The work has inspired both admiration and skepticism. Many paleontologists have a hard time believing some of the humans that are known to have lived during that era could have been pairing up with apes.

"It's a totally cool and extremely clever analysis," said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who wasn't involved in the study. "My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates — not to put it too crudely."
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One word: Furries.