Human, Chimp Ancestors May Have Mated???

According to this National Geographic article, early human ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors may have mated and produced offspring, according to a new DNA study.

The study suggests that the human and chimp lineages initially split off from a single ape species about ten million years ago. Later, early chimps and early human ancestors may have begun interbreeding, creating hybrids—and complicating and prolonging the evolutionary separation of the two lineages.

The second and final split occurred some four million years after the first one, the report proposes.

"One thing that emerges [from the data] is a reestimate of the date when humans and chimps last exchanged genes," said David Reich, a professor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics in Boston.

In another study, scientists have sequenced the genome of the chimpanzee and found that humans are 96 percent similar to the great ape species.

This is no conclusive proof of a mating relationship between chimps and humans even if we accept the genome similarity, science hasn't yet proved how these genomes were formed in the first place.

Science refers to verifiable knowledge and until this thoery can be proved it must remain in the realm of fiction.