tail

While many primate species have tails, humans and their ape cousins do not. For many years scientists have debated the reasons for this curious tail loss variation, trying to understand the reasons behind this difference. A team of geneticists, affiliated with NYU Langone Health in New York City, published a new paper in the journal Nature. Their research suggests that a seemingly random piece of DNA inserted into the genome of a human ancestor is responsible for the loss of the tail in modern humans and apes. The addition of this foreign element would have occurred approximately 25 million years ago, and its impact on the subsequent evolution of our species and its ancestors has been profound. Tail phenotypes across