Quote Originally Posted by momoffuzzyfaces
Then why do they wave those charts with a monkey gradually growing into a human under our noses? You know the monkey, ape, neanderthal, caveman, modern man chart????

By the way, a COMMON ANCESTOR, means they decended from the same thing. If the chart shows a monkey first, they would have decended from a monkey. And why did some of them stay monkeys?
I've never seen a chart like that....it's horribly inaccurate. IF there is a common ancester between humand and apes it likely had the characteristics of all of them to a small degree, and then because more specialized over time depending on geographic isolation and other factors until it became a bunch of different species.

IF there is an ancestral type of ape, no ape (or monkey) living today would resemble it because it would have had to change and adapt to the changing environment. There are many many fossils that COULD be an 'ancestral type' or something along the path between the ancestral type and today.