Henry J
Posts: 5786
Joined: Mar. 2005
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Most of those items are changes in proportion of something that's present in both species, or a slight change in position of something. I wouldn't either of those to necessarily require much genetic change.
Re "Primates have 48 chromosomes. [...] yet somehow we have only 46 chromosomes!"
That's been mentioned around here someplace quite recently, I think. Somewhere along the way two chromosomes fused, and the remnants of the fused ends can be seen in the middle of the resulting chromosome in humans.
Re "any reason why a Martian Linnaeus, say, would assign us to two different genera?"
I gather the answer is no. From what I understand, the amount of difference between human and chimp is typical of pairs of species that are placed in the same genus (i.e., less than the amount of difference generally expected of two genera in the same family).
Henry
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