How Humans v Non-Human Primates Differ

Interesting article about key differences that make humans cognitively different from non-human primate. What I find especially interesting (and relevant) is how more and more we are finding that the key differences are not in different genes in genomes (DNA) per se but the transcriptome (RNA and how RNA regulates gene expression). Put more simply, the differences are less due to different genes, and more due to how the *same* genes are expressed.

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-reveals-genes-humans-primates-cognitive.amp

Expressed? As in arrangement?

As in what what physical features those genes convey.

What is it changing in the body?

If they are the same genes, then expressed in an arrangement, much like the letters of two books all have the same words in different order.

Fossil finds amplify Europe’s status as a hotbed of great ape evolution (sciencenews.org)

Two lines of ancient apes, including what may be the smallest great ape yet, lived alongside each other in Europe, fossils discovered in a Bavarian clay pit indicate. It’s the first time that different species of ape, each with a distinctive body style and diet, have been found coexisting outside of Africa, researchers say.

Germany’s Hammerschmiede site previously yielded 11.6-million-year-old fossils of Danuvius guggenmosi (SN: 11/6/19). That creature, categorized as an extinct great ape, gained fame as possibly the oldest known upright walker, a team led by paleontologist Madelaine Böhme of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany reported at the time.

Now Böhme and colleagues report that three fossils found in the Danuvius sediment layer come from a newly identified great ape dubbed Buronius manfredschmidi. A partial upper molar and a kneecap found next to each other probably represent a young, sexually immature individual, Böhme says. A partial lower premolar excavated about 25 meters from the other fossils belonged to an adult, the team reports June 7 in PLOS One.

Based on the size and shape of those fossils, the researchers suspect Buronius weighed only around 10 kilograms, making it the smallest known great ape. Modern siamangs, a type of gibbon classified as a lesser ape, also weigh around 10 kilograms.

The few fossils are enough to start piecing together Buronius’ lifestyle, the team contends. A thin outer layer of tooth enamel would have been suited to a diet of soft foods. Several features of the relatively short, thick fossil kneecap enabled skillful climbing. That suggests that Buronius ate leaves high in trees and sweet fruits in the summer and fall.

Danuvius, which grew to about twice the size of Buronius, had thickly enameled teeth that could manage tough foods, such as mollusks, nuts, roots, underground stems and meat from small animals.

If Böhme’s group is correct, Hammerschmiede represents the first locale outside Africa to have hosted two Miocene great ape species at the same time. The Miocene Epoch extended from about 23 million to 5 million years ago. Miocene great apes belong to an evolutionary family that includes modern chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans.

Evidence that Danuvius and Buronius survived on different resources in the same place “shows that ecosystems in the Miocene of Europe enabled, perhaps even forced, the evolution of diverse ape lineages,” Böhme says.

With the addition of Buronius, European fossil ape genera related to modern great apes from between roughly 16 million and 6 million years ago now number 16, she says. That’s more than twice as many as have been found in Africa dating to the same period.

Helluva a support for Common Descent, isn't it?

How could all these creatures have common ancestry, unless they have the same genetic coding?

Seeing specified information that requires translation of information for processing to perform very integrated systematic complex tasks has more in common in our digital world of coding designed by a coder writing code with processes embedded within processes, within processes, than an accidental falling out of millions of different pieces to perform an integrated systematic series of tasks against the natural tendency of falling apart.

But every species in Earth has the exact same genetic “code.” Because they all came from one common ancestor.

If they did not share a common code , Common Descent would be impossible.

I agree common code for life, but due to design constraints and limitations not chance and necessity, it too functionally complex. Random selection doesn’t produce syntax for information translation to do functional work. It produces gibberish!

And who said Evolution was “random.”

It is either intentional or not, if intentional we are talking about design, if not, chance and necessity do not have the creative abilities to create forms and functions through information processing where information is required that must be written, read, and executed.

Just because something in unintentional, does not mean it is “random.”

As TBWP has explained to you in detail already.

Something coming through due to chance and necessity is not random, the word necessity takes that out of the equation, but chance-feeding necessity does not do anything to create functional forms and features that require biological functional systematic activity that acts in the same way as language, or high-level digital coding. You may get features that carry some recognizable forms but nothing that could give rise to Integrated functionality.

Chance is random and it implies there isn't a plan or design.