title: Immunological time scale for hominid evolution.
abstract: Several workers have observed that there is an extremely close immunological resemblance between the serum albumins of apes and man. Our studies with the quantitative micro-complement fixation method confirm this observation. To explain the closeness of the resemblance, previous workers suggested that there has been a slowing down of albumin evolution since the time of divergence of apes and man. Recent evidence, however, indicates that the albumin molecule has evolved at a steady rate. Hence, we suggest that apes and man have a more recent common ancestry than is usually supposed. Our calculations lead to the suggestion that, if man and Old World monkeys last shared a common ancestor 30 million years ago, then man and African apes shared a common ancestor 5 million years ago, that is, in the Pliocene era.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D000882:Haplorhini; D015186:Hominidae; D006801:Humans; D007120:Immunochemistry; D008967:Molecular Biology; D012709:Serum Albumin
chemical_list: D012709:Serum Albumin