Apparently, according to this article they must have been pretty desperate 6 million years ago.
The relevant part of the article states:
The researchers, from the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, propose humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines. That genetic collaboration gave rise to two branches ? one leading to humans and the other to chimps.
The work has inspired both admiration and skepticism. Many palaeontologists have a hard time believing some of the fossil humans known to have lived during that era could have been pairing up with apes.
"It's a totally cool and extremely clever analysis," said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who wasn't involved in the study
"My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates ? not to put it too crudely."
The report, published in yesterday's issue Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest.
The relevant part of the article states:
The researchers, from the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, propose humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines. That genetic collaboration gave rise to two branches ? one leading to humans and the other to chimps.
The work has inspired both admiration and skepticism. Many palaeontologists have a hard time believing some of the fossil humans known to have lived during that era could have been pairing up with apes.
"It's a totally cool and extremely clever analysis," said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who wasn't involved in the study
"My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates ? not to put it too crudely."
The report, published in yesterday's issue Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest.
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