Chapter 13 - Once there was an ancestor between humans and apes: in the quest for the enigmatic missing link

Abstract

A missing link is a transitional biological entity that possesses several “in-between” evolutionary features that maintain a phylogenetic connection between the ancestors of original traits and the newly derived descendants with derived traits. The discovery of a wide array of human fossils in the 19th century and the advancement in the domain of molecular genetics, and genomics specifically with the investigations of DNA specimens, extracted from extinct and extant hominids and hominoids in the early 20th century have helped evolutionary biologists and molecular phylogeneticists promoting the perception of missing link: “ape-man,” the enigmatic evolutionary link between anatomically modern human species to apes, the phylogenetic ancestors. The supporters and critics of the Darwinian principle of biological evolution have considered the existence of transitional or missing links: ape-man, as the ultimate proof to substantiate the theory of human evolution.