Orangutans May Be Closest Human Relatives, Not Chimps

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But looking at physical traits rather than genetic ones, orangutans are a better match, Grehan and Schwartz say.


"A hole in the roof of the mouth that was supposedly unique to humans is also present in orangs," Schwartz said.

"Humans and orangs have the widest-separated mammary glands, and they grow the longest hair," he added. "Humans and orangs actually have a hairline, in contrast to virtually all primates, where the hair comes down to the top of the eyes."

The team also highlighted orangutan-type traits in the teeth and jaw remains of ancient fossil apes from Africa and Europe.

Based on their analysis, the authors suggest "that humans and orangutans share a common ancestor that excludes [living] African apes."

But orangutans are native to Southeast Asia, which creates a problem: How did humans evolve in Africa if we are so closely related to the geographically distant orangutan? (Explore a human migration time line.)

The mainstream view is that humans evolved from the same group as African great apes: chimps, bonobos, and gorillas.

Instead, the authors speculate that a widely distributed orangutan-like ancestor of humans lived in Africa, Europe, and Asia some 13 million years ago.

Subsequent changes in climate and environment likely caused many populations to become extinct, leaving Asian and African species to evolve in isolation.

"Wacky Idea"

"There are actually very few [physical] features linking chimps and humans," noted the Natural History Museum's Andrews. "The case for that is based almost entirely on molecular evidence."

And those molecular studies are flawed, Schwartz and Grehan say, because of the high likelihood that the data includes broadly shared DNA traits.

"When you're doing a really rigorous analysis of relationships, you don't just stop at the potential demonstration of similarity," Schwartz said. "You have to distinguish between features that are widely shared [among many species] and those that are more uniquely shared."

In addition, Schwartz notes, the most cited studies are largely based on the so-called coding region of the genome, which makes up just 2 to 3 percent of an animal's DNA.

Scientists are referring to this tiny part of the genome when they say humans and chimps are so similar, he said.

But other studies that focus on non-coding regions also consistently support a human-chimp link, counters Carel van Schaik of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

"A study that reaches a very different conclusion [from the genetic evidence] must explain why these molecular studies are wrong," van Schaik, who also serves as a consultant to the conservation group Borneo Orangutan Survival UK, said in an email.

"Of course, orangutans are very human-like in many respects, but so are chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas … ."

Anthropologist Nick Newton-Fisher, of the University of Kent in the U.K., described the human evolutionary path implied by the new study as a "wacky idea."

"Given the weight of evidence from the genetics," he said, he would be reluctant to accept the new findings.

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