Great Ape NJ tree
Phylogenetic Relationships within and among Gorillas, Chimps, & Humans

This is a Neighbor Joining (NJ) tree of distances over 15,447bp of the mitochondrial DNA coding region, for two pairs of Gorillas & Chimps, one Neandertal, and three Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) assigned to haplogroups L1, A, and U [African, First Nations, and European]. Note the similarity to a Coalescent tree with recent origination of variation: branches (edges) within groups are much shorter than those among groups. The tree confirms a closer relationship between human and chimps, rather than humans and gorillas.


Figure © 2007 after SMC Flynn & SM Carr;  Text material © 2017 by Steven M. Carr