Thread: Number of chromosomes

I believe that human cells contain 23 chromosomes, while those of our nearest ape relatives have 24, so that either our ancestors or theirs changed number.Tossing a mental coin, assume it was our ancestors who changed, then initially there would have been an individual with 23 chromosomes in a population where everyone else had 24. A number of questions arise.1 - How would that individual differ? There must have been substantially advantageous differences for it to have become the new standard.2 - Could 23 and 24 chromosome individuals interbreed? If not, there would be an Adam-and-Eve situation when two 23-chromosome individuals occurred. If such cross-breeding could occur, I wonder if there are populations of any animal with differing numbers of chromosomes?3 - How long would it have taken for the species to change from all having 23 chromosomes to all having 24?

Originally Posted by W Frankland

I believe that human cells contain 23 chromosomes, while those of our nearest ape relatives have 24, so that either our ancestors or theirs changed number. Tossing a mental coin, assume it was our ancestors who changed, then initially there would have been an individual with 23 chromosomes in a population where everyone else had 24.

To begin with, there's apparently no need to toss a coin...

All members of Hominidae except humans have 24 pairs of chromosomes. Humans have only 23 pairs of chromosomes. Human chromosome 2 is widely accepted to be a result of an end-to-end fusion of two ancestral chromosomes

source

To solve the problem of different number of chromosomes between apes and humans, Darwinists suggested the ‘chromosome 2 fusion model’. Wikipedia mentioned that the model is "widely accepted". However, there are many problems with this suggestion. Details

You've been informed before that that particular site is crank.