Australian researchers have discovered that kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may have first evolved in China.
A study centre in Canberra has for the first time mapped the genetic code of the Australian marsupials and found much of it was similar to the genome of humans.
The centre’s director says “There are great chunks of the human genome sitting right there in the kangaroo genome.”
Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago while mice and humans diverged from one another only 70 million years ago.
Kangaroos are hugely informative about what we were like 150 million years ago.
Must be why we hop araound so much.
Ain’t science great!!
Just wait for the creationists to shriek about this though… they hate progress.
Wow, we have kangaroo Courts. That proves the connection.
It’s not the hop that does it, it’s the tail.
Or the pouch.
Good morrow, all!
When the aborigines in Australia were asked what they called the odd hopping beastie with the pouch, they were told “kangaroo”. It was not until later that the white man found out that “kangaroo” was aborigine for “#$%^&@-ed if I know” Which just about sums up what we understand about evolution. Of course, politicians are living proof that not all evolution results in progress. Or so I would digress…CTZen
Neil’s post made me curious about the claim that the kangaroo and man have genetic similarities.
So I did some googling.
And what I discovered is that the similarities are far more extensive than the scientists imagined. For example, kangaroos tend to go blind from the very same activities that humans do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6VKtk1FesY
.
It amazes me that everthing seems to have been made with a base dna and then some higher power would only have had to tweak here or there to complete the dna sequence to make everything that lives on earth. Now us humans are starting to get close to be able to bring some dinosaurs back to life, starting with some found old dna. Sort of like Jurasic park, imagine coming up to a man eating dinosaur out in the woods, ha. Or like the guy in the outhouse in Jurasic Park, ha. I always wondered if he had pooped his pants, Dinosaur says, Darn this human tastes like sh1t. Definitively interesting stuff this dna stuff. Was just wondering today, what if God was mortal had passed on and we are all now alone.
I always thought my bouncy walk was due to a childhood of watching Tigger in Winnie the Pooh. Now I may just have a new theory.
Very interesting discovery.
“what if God was mortal had passed on and we are all now alone.”
Is that much different to how I live today?? There is/was/will_never_be a god…. we ARE alone – deal with it!