![]() Since then, paleoanthropologists have found fossils that shed some light on this transformation. “I cannot doubt that it is a rudimentary tail,” he wrote. He noted that while humans and apes lack a visible tail, they share a tiny set of vertebrae that extend beyond the pelvis - a structure known as the coccyx. When the ancestors of humans stood up and walked on two legs a few million years ago, that muscular hammock was ready to support the weight of upright organs.Īlthough it’s impossible to definitively prove that this mutation lopped off our ancestors’ tails, “it’s as close to a smoking gun as one could hope for,” said Cedric Feschotte, a geneticist at Cornell who was not involved in the study.ĭarwin shocked his Victorian audiences by claiming that we descended from primates with tails. Our ancestors’ tail muscles evolved into a hammock-like mesh across the pelvis. This dramatic anatomical change had a profound impact on our evolution. When the scientists made this genetic tweak in mice, the animals didn’t grow tails, according to a new study that was posted online last week. Now a team of scientists in New York say they have pinpointed the genetic mutation that may have erased our tails. But how and why it happened has remained a mystery. But then, roughly 25 million years ago, the tails disappeared.Ĭharles Darwin first recognized this change in our ancient anatomy. Much later, when they evolved into primates, their tails helped them stay balanced as they raced from branch to branch through Eocene jungles. As fish, they used their tails to swim through the Cambrian seas. For half a billion years or so, our ancestors sprouted tails.
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