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Question: Think about a cladogram that shows the evolutionary relationship between humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. A cladogram of these species would currently show humans and chimpanzees with a more recent common ancestor compared to gorillas. Which piece of evidence, if true, would most likely weaken this hypothesis?

DNA sequence analysis of the hemoglobin alpha gene shows that humans and chimpanzees have a more similar sequence to each other than they do to the gorilla's DNA sequence.  

Fossils of humans appear in deeper sedimentary rock layers compared to fossils of chimpanzees.  

Amino acid analysis of a certain protein show significant differences in the sequence of amino acids between humans and gorillas

The cells of the eye in embryos of gorillas and humans follow a similar pattern of development while the eye cells of chimpanzee embryos are different.

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
The last option (the embryonic eye-cell development pattern being the same in gorillas and humans but different in chimpanzees).

Reason: phylogenetic hypotheses are based on shared derived traits (including developmental patterns). If humans and gorillas share a distinctive developmental pattern that chimpanzees lack, that would be evidence that humans and gorillas are more closely related to each other than either is to chimpanzees, contradicting the current cladogram.

Why the others don't weaken it:
- The hemoglobin DNA result supports the current hypothesis (humans and chimps more similar).
- Large amino-acid differences between humans and gorillas also support humans being closer to chimps.
- Fossil depth (humans in deeper layers) is ambiguous and less reliable for inferring branching order (incomplete fossil record, reworking, dating issues), so it is not as strong evidence against the current hypothesis.