So...if we evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?

Answer 1

Modern man belongs to the genus Homo, which is a subgroup in the family of hominids. What evolved into Homo was likely the genus Australopithecus (once called "man-ape"), which includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old "Lucy" fossil found three decades ago.

The whole human family tree, being able to connect the branches is the life work of anthropoligists and other scientists. The great apes are man's closest cousins, they developed off the main family of hominids.

Answer 2

Evolution works on a very large timescale. Species evolve from each other through two theoretical ways: punctuated equilibrium or gradualism. The idea behind these two mechanisms is that one species is divided, this can happen by a physical boundary separating a segment of the population off from the main one, for example or a catastrophic event causing a change in one's environment. When these two separate, they begin to build up differences to adapt to their environments - over millions of years these differences and random genetic mutations eventually cause the two populations to be considered different species. The fact that we evolved from apes, and apes from monkeys does not mean that the original population that we evolved from would need to become extinct. They keep evolving just as we have. It is true that there existed species of monkey that no longer exist today, just like there were species of hominids that led to our evolution that are today extinct.

Answer 3

I think it's not that we evolved from what we currently call monkeys but that monkeys and humans both evolved from a common ancestor that we also (confusingly) refer to as a monkey. At least, that's my take on it.

Answer 4

Those monkeys do not want to evolve, maybe for not having to work

Answer 5

Its called divergent evolution...GO here and it'll explain it to you.

"Divergent evolution occurs when two or more biological characteristics have a common evolutionary origin and those characters have diverged over evolutionary time. This is also known as adaptive radiation. These characters can be observable structures from different species or they can be molecular entities, such as genes or pathways. This is a kind of relationship observed in evolutionary biology.

Divergent evolution can be seen in some higher level characters of structure and function that are readily observable in organisms. For example, the vertebrate limb is one example of divergent evolution. The limb in many different species has a common origin, but has diverged somewhat in overall structure and function.

Alternatively, "divergent evolution" can be applied to molecular biology characteristics. This could apply to a pathway in two or more organisms or cell types, for example. This can apply to genes and proteins, such as nucleotide sequences or protein sequences that derive from two or more homologous genes. Both orthologous genes (resulting from a speciation event) and paralogous genes (resulting from gene duplication within a population) can be said to display divergent evolution. Because of the latter, it is possible for divergent evolution to occur between two genes within a species.

Divergent evolution and convergent evolution are two primary possible explanations for the observation of similarity of a shared biological character. In the case of divergent evolution, similarity is due to the common origin (e.g. divergence from a common ancestral structure or function has not yet completely obscured the underlying similarity). In contrast, convergent evolution arises when there are some sort of ecological or physical drivers toward a similar solution, even though the structure or function has arisen independently (e.g. the different characters converge on a common, similar solution from different points of origin.)

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Usage
The usage of this term and other related terms can vary slightly from one researchers to the next. Furthermore, the actual relationships might be more complex than the simple definitions of these terms allow. "Divergent evolution" is most commonly meant when someone invokes evolutionary relationships and "convergent evolution" is applied in the subset of instances when similarity is created by evolution independently creating similar structures and functions. "Parallel Evolution" is also sometimes used to describe the appearance of a similar structure in closely related species, whereas convergent evolution is used primarily to refer to similar stuctures in different much more distantly related clades. For example, some might call the modification of the vertebrate limb to become a wing in (different) bats and birds to be an example of parallel evolution. The core vertebrate limb has a common origin and thus, in general, shows divergent evolution. However, the modification to the specific structure and function of a wing evolved independently and in parallel within several different vertebrate clades.

In complex structures, there may be other cases where some aspects of the structures are due to divergence and some aspects that might be due to convergence or parallelism. In the case of the eye, it was initially thought that different clades had different origins of the eye, but this is no longer thought by some researchers. It is possible that induction of the light-sensing eye during development might be diverging from a common ancestor across many clades, but the details of how the eye is constructed--and in particular the structures that focus light in cephalapods and vertebrates, for example--might have some convergent or parallel aspects to it, as well. (See Gehring reference below and other researchers cited in that research field)."

Answer 6

Exactly! The word evolution in the dictionary speaks for itself.

Answer 7

So...if Christians came from Jews, why do Jews still exist?

Answer 8

thank you soooooo much for asking this question!!