Human-Chimp Hybrid: A New Twist On Human Origins Or Yet Another Problem For Evolution?
Biochemist says recent human-chimpanzee genetic comparison muddles human evolutionary scenarios and makes them less believable
To: National Desk
Contact: Kathleen Campbell, Campbell Public Relations, 719-540-6022
NEWS ADVISORY, May 23, 2006, /Christian Wire Service/ -- A new highly publicized study by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard indicates that humans and chimps underwent an evolutionary split less than 5.4 million years ago, much more recently than previously thought.
“This research suggests that modern humans descended from a chimp-human hybrid raising significant questions about traditional evolutionary explanations for human origins,” says biochemist Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, PhD, a well-known origin-of-life researcher from the science/faith think-tank, Reasons To Believe, www.reasons.org.
“Field studies demonstrate that hybrid populations die off. It’s hard to imagine how chimp and human lineages could emerge out of a group of fragile hybrids that should have become extinct,” adds Rana.
“A late split flat-out disagrees with the fossil record. This research has the human and chimpanzee lineages separating nearly 2 million years after the first hominids appear in the fossil record,” states Rana. “In order for that premise to be correct, the split had to have happened either before or at the same time as the first hominids, but not 2 million years after!”
Dr. Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana is the author of the Amazon.com bestseller Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man, (NavPress). This book details a number of other recent genetic studies which challenge the notion of human evolution.
“Comparison of whole genomes indicates that humans and chimpanzees have a genetic similarity that is less than 90 percent,” says Rana. “Prior to these comparisons, evolutionary biologists thought humans and chimpanzees were 98-99 percent genetically similar.
“Instead of adding clarity, the most recent human-chimp genetic comparisons render human evolutionary models confused and contradictory,” continues Rana. “This makes me skeptical of human evolutionary accounts,”
In Who Was Adam? Dr. Rana also presents genetic studies that indicate modern humans originated only thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago as espoused by traditional human evolutionary models.
According to Rana and a growing number of research scientists, genetic diversity patterns of people groups around the world indicate that modern humans exploded onto the scene recently from a small population in a single location, the same area identified by most biblical scholars as the physical location of the Garden of Eden.
“It is fascinating that in light of huge technological advances from the late 20th to early 21st centuries, scientists now know that humanity traces back, genetically speaking, to a single man and single woman,” Rana concludes. “Belief in a literal and historical Adam and Eve as recounted in the Bible has greater scientific credibility today than at any other time in human history.”
Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, Ph.D. -- Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana did his undergraduate work in chemistry at West Virginia State College. He then completed his post-graduate studies at Ohio University and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry. After completing postdoctoral fellowships at the universities of Virginia and Georgia, he worked for seven years in product development research for Procter & Gamble
Prior to joining the scholar team at Reasons To Believe in 1999, he published more than 15 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and made more than 20 presentations at international scientific meetings. Dr. Rana also coauthored a chapter on antimicrobial peptides for Biological and Synthetic Membranes and he holds one patent.
Since joining Reasons To Believe he has chaired three conferences and has written two books published by NavPress, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off and Who Was Adam: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man. He has published numerous articles on the apologetic significance of recent discoveries in the life sciences. He appears each week on the live Web broadcast, Creation Update, and is a highly popular and frequent guest on a wide variety of nationally/internationally syndicated talk radio and television programs.
