"mel turner" <mturner@snipthis.acpub.duke.edu> wrote in message
news:e6csjc$tt9$1@gargoyle.oit.duke.edu...

<jtem01@gmail.com> wrote in message
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mel turner wrote:

"Conspiracy of Doves" <mark_dp73@yahoo.com> wrote

Humans and monkeys had a common ancestor about 50 million
years ago. Nowhere, except in the most illiterate anti-evolution
literature, will you find a claim that humans evolved from monkeys.

I disagree. This one is a minor personal pet peeve. In exactly the
same way that our common ancestors with other "great apes" will
have been a "great ape", our common ancestor with any "monkey"
will indeed have been a "monkey". If "monkey" can be construed
as meaning "any small, tailed, non-ape anthropoid primate", then
yes, we humans and the other apes did indeed evolve from early
"monkeys".

Speaking of pet peeves...

I have to disgaree with your wording, if not your intent.

Your description suggests (or certainly promotes the idea of)
linear progression, which may not be the case & certainly isn't
required.

Well, certainly no such implication was intended. I just meant that if
we can take the English word "ape" to be roughly equivalent to a
formal taxonomic group like Hominidae or Hominoidea, then "monkey"
might similarly be taken as being equivalent to Anthropoidea [or
Simiiformes, in more recent classifications of the primates]. If we do
that, then humans and [other] apes should be considered one particular
specialized subgroup of the larger "monkeys" group. Just as we might
say "humans are not only descended from apes, we _are_ apes", we could
also say "humans and apes are not only descended from monkeys, we _are_
monkeys".

Even in the folk definition sense, just as the common ancestors of
humans and any modern apes were "apes" in that they will have been
large, tailless, hairy hominoid primates, our earlier common ancestors
with any modern monkeys will have been "monkeys" in that they were
smaller, tailed anthropoid primates. Of course neither are "ape"
ancestors or our "monkey" ancestors will have been identical to any of
the [other] modern species of apes or monkeys.

cheers

'Fraid not. The ancestors of monkeys and the ancestors of
humans branched off a common root at different times.
Monkey ancestors went one way and human ancestors
another. Monkeys are not our ancestors. Apes are. In fact,
we are simply an updated type of ape.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#tchadensis

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/recent.html#mille

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html#chart