There is nothing new about humans and all other vertebrates having evolved from fish. The conventional understanding has been that certain fish shimmied landwards roughly 370 million years ago as primitive, lizard-like animals known as tetrapods.
Strong evidence supports the branching of the human lineage from the one that produced great apes (orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas) in Africa sometime between 6 and 7 million years ago.
Humans diverged from apes [specifically, the chimpanzee lineage (Pan)] at some point between ~9.3 million and ~6.5 million years ago (Ma), and habitual bipedalism evolved early in hominins (accompanied by enhanced manipulation and, later on, cognition).
Noting that human babies are born helpless, Anaximander speculated that humans must have descended from some other type of creature whose young could survive without any help. He concluded that those ancestors must be fish, since fish hatch from eggs and immediately begin living with no help from their parents.
Like modern-day apes and monkeys, we evolved from ancient monkeys. And like all vertebrates with four-limbs, known as tetrapods, we evolved from the same ancient fishes. The more living relatives we include in a family, the farther back we must go to find that family's common fossil ancestors.
When the earth was new, all living things reproduced asexually: rather than finding sexual partners, individuals begot copies of themselves to perpetuate their ilk. This was simple. It was efficient. Every member of the species was capable of reproducing and did so without help from any of their kin.
Did we evolve from monkeys? 5 to 8 million years ago. Shortly thereafter, the species diverged into two separate lineages. One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps, and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids.
The first ancestors of fish, or animals that were probably closely related to fish, were Pikaia, Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia. These three genera all appeared around 530 Ma. Pikaia had a primitive notochord, a structure that could have developed into a vertebral column later.
Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years and evolved from their most likely recent common ancestor, Homo erectus, which means 'upright man' in Latin. Homo erectus is an extinct species of human that lived between 1.9 million and 135,000 years ago.
Mythical theory: Among traditional communities, different stories of origin are told to the young explaining how members of their community are thought to have come into being. Creation theory: Christians believe that God created the first human beings whom he named Adam and Eve.
Humankind evolved from a bag-like sea creature that had a large mouth, apparently had no anus and moved by wriggling, scientists have said. The microscopic species is the earliest known prehistoric ancestor of humanity and lived 540 million years ago, a study published in the journal Nature said.
There's a simple answer: Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees or any of the other great apes that live today. We instead share a common ancestor that lived roughly 10 million years ago.
H. erectus is the oldest known species to have a human-like body, with relatively elongated legs and shorter arms in comparison to its torso.
Yes, humans, like all land-dwelling vertebrates, are descended from fish. Not modern fish, of course, but from ancient species of fish, and one species in particular that happened to spend some time on land and gradually developed adaptations for breathing air and walking.
Probably not. Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject, but it's safe to say that human DNA has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible.
The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago. Then some of them spread from Africa into Asia and Europe after two million years ago.
Dark skin. All modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa. Comparisons between known skin pigmentation genes in chimpanzees and modern Africans show that dark skin evolved along with the loss of body hair about 1.2 million years ago and that this common ancestor had dark skin.
Our species, Homo sapiens, has now spread to all parts of the world but it's generally believed that we originated in Africa by about 200,000 years ago.
ˈman-ˈkīnd. -ˌkīnd. : the human race : the totality of human beings.
A: Sharks were swimming around in the ancient seas 150 million years before the first dinosaurs rumbled about on land.
Gills were present in the earliest fish, but lungs also evolved pretty early on, potentially from the tissue sac that surrounds the gills. Swim bladders evolved soon after lungs, and are thought to have evolved from lung tissue.
Dinosaurs laid eggs, the fish that first crawled out of the sea laid eggs, and the weird articulated monsters that swam in the warm shallow seas of the Cambrian Period 500 million years ago also laid eggs. They weren't chicken's eggs, but they were still eggs. So the egg definitely came first.
Broadly speaking, evolution simply means the gradual change in the genetics of a population over time. From that standpoint, human beings are constantly evolving and will continue to do so long as we continue to successfully reproduce.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
Humans have never stopped evolving and continue to do so today. Evolution is a slow process that takes many generations of reproduction to become evident. Because humans take so long to reproduce, it takes hundreds to thousands of years for changes in humans to become evident.