Posted by Walker on August 04, 1998 at 12:42:27:
In Reply to: Some questions about evolution posted by Linjun Xu on August 04, 1998 at 09:41:53:
: First of all I believe in evolution, so don't misunderstand:). I just have some questions
: to ask, becuase I am lack of knowledge about evolution theory.
: We know that Human has 46 chromosomes, and other animals have like 48, 50, 34 ... All animals
: are different in Chromosome number. So during evolution, how many chromosomes do human ancestors have?
: I mean those apes :), not stone age human. And how many chromosomes do those ape's ancestors have?
I found this discussion on chromosomal evolution to be enlightening
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/bottleneck.html
At this site also you can find a discussion of what the difference between humans and apes is in terms of inversion and translocation mutations; basically the difference is nine inversions and one translocation. I think the translocation leads to the difference in chromosome numbers between humans (46) and apes (48).