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"Ape", from Old English apa, is a word of uncertain origin. [b] The term has a history of rather imprecise usage—and of comedic or punning usage in the vernacular.Its earliest meaning was generally of any non-human anthropoid primate, as is still the case for its cognates in other Germanic languages.
The Hominidae (/ h ɒ ˈ m ɪ n ɪ d iː /), whose members are known as the great apes [note 1] or hominids (/ ˈ h ɒ m ɪ n ɪ d z /), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans ...
The taxonomic classification of humans following John Edward Gray (1825). Human taxonomy on one hand involves the placement of humans within the taxonomy of the hominids (great apes), and on the other the division of archaic and modern humans into species and, if applicable, subspecies.
They had a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics. Proconsul's monkey-like features include thin tooth enamel, a light build with a narrow chest and short forelimbs, and an arboreal quadrupedal lifestyle. Its ape-like features are its lack of a tail, ape-like elbows, and a slightly larger brain relative to body size.
The Old World species are divided into apes and monkeys depending on the number of cusps on their molars: monkeys have four, apes have five [73] - although humans may have four or five. [79] The main hominid molar cusp ( hypocone ) evolved in early primate history, while the cusp of the corresponding primitive lower molar (paraconid) was lost.
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
Since Gray's classifications, evidence accumulating from genetic phylogeny confirmed that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas are more closely related to each other than to the orangutan. [3] The orangutans were reassigned to the family Hominidae ( great apes ), which already included humans; and the gorillas were grouped as a separate tribe ...
Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The two species were formerly collectively called "chimpanzees" or "chimps"; if bonobos were recognized as a separate group at all, they were referred to as "pygmy" or "gracile chimpanzees".