HOMININI

'Hominini' is the tribe of Homininae that only includes humans (''Homo''), chimpanzees (''Pan''), and their extinct ancestors. Members of the tribe are called 'hominins' (cf. Hominidae, "hominids").
The creation of this taxon is the result of the current idea that the least similar species of a trichotomy should be separated from the other two. Through DNA comparison, scientists believe the ''Pan/Homo'' divergence was completed between 5.4 to 6.3 million years ago, after an unusual process of speciation that ranged over four million years. Human and chimp genomes reveal new twist on origin of species It is interesting to note that no fossil species on the ''Pan'' side of the split have been determined; all of the extinct genera listed to the right are ancestral to ''Homo'', or are offshoots of such. However, both ''Orrorin'' and ''Sahelanthropus'' existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to both humans and chimpanzees.
In the proposal of Mann and Weiss (1996), Hominoid Phylogeny and Taxonomy: a consideration of the molecular and Fossil Evidence in an Historical Perspective, Mann, Alan and Mark Weiss, , , Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 1996 the tribe ''Hominini'' includes ''Pan'' as well as ''Homo'' as separate subtribes. ''Homo'' (and, by inference, all bipedal apes) is by itself only in the subtribe Hominina, while ''Pan'' is in the Panina subtribe.

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See also

★ Cladistics

★ Human evolution

References