:smack: That should be 'we didn’t evolve from the apes that exist today.
Not totally accurate but it’s a good rebuttal and pretty easy to understand in the context of the original question. I’ll have to remember this one. 
And consequently, contrary to the comment just after yours, so is the common ancestor of us and all other apes.
No, we didn’t evolve from any modern apes, but the first ape was the most recent common ancestor of all modern apes, including humans.
Evolution as a concept is one that has been debased and confused in the popular imagination so much that it isn’t surprising that there are recurring questions like this.
I think much of the lack of understanding comes from our basic belief that we are the intended pinnacle of life of earth, instead of a species among other species, all being products of millions of random events.
What’s the oldest unchanged species? I thought it was cockroaches, but on examination, the issue is somewhat more nuanced than I expected. Is there an example of an extant species with a distinct offshoot, i.e. an ancestral “ape” that still exists?
Nitpick. Some say humans are apes. (I descend from an ape – my grandfather!) Wikipedia shows this phylogeny:
Superfamily Hominoidea (Apes)
Family Hominidae (Great Apes)
Subfamily Homininae (Gorilla and Hominini)
If Homo isn’t Ape, it’s the only genus in Hominini, Homininae, Hominidae, or Hominoidea which isn’t.
Very poignant, indeed. Your post reminded me of one of my favorite quotes:
“What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.” -Aldo Leopold
How do you define “unchanged”? Still exactly identical to their ancestors? I’m not even identical to my parents, much less to any of my ancestors in the umpteen generations before them. Close enough that they still look mostly alike? How alike is “mostly”, and are you sure there aren’t any non-obvious but important differences you’re missing? Close enough that they could interbreed if brought into contact with each other? The only way to learn that is to bring them into contact, and I left my time machine in the pocket of my other pants.
Not to hijack the thread, but what did Gorshin say? I’m familiar with the episode, but haven’t seen it in quite a while.
I’d go with the last one. The ability to breed and produce fertile offspring is the central hallmark of a species. So if an individual animal from today would be able to produce such offspring with an individual animal from a hundred million years ago, I’d say they both belong to a single unchanged species.
The answer will probably turn out to be the horseshoe crab.
The horseshoe crab might be a reasonable guess, but without that time machine, a guess is all we can do. Maybe there’s some subtle biochemical difference between the horseshoe crabs of today and those of a mere few thousand years ago that would prevent them from interbreeding: How would we know?
Nope, no religious agenda.
Heck, I remember a* B.C. *cartoon (after Johnny Hart got all religious and junk, presumably) that has one character ask another the “why are there still apes?” zinger, as though it made any sense. The character being asked, of course, had no reply.
Was the answer satisfactory, or do you still have questions?
I’ll use this metaphor for my answer – a baker has three children; two remain bakers and inherit their father’s bakery, but one moves to another town and becomes a blacksmith. That a baker became a blacksmith does not mean that there are no more bakers, or no more niches for bakers to be successful.
I like the one about “Why are there still Jews?”
Because Christianity really evolved from Hellenism, ya dufuses. Which is gone.
Oh, fine, maybe a coupla not-so-nice Jewish boys met up with some Greek women, kinda like when the Cro-Magnons met up with the Neanderthals, and produced a new hybrid.
But there were a whole lot more Hellenists then Jews, and the Jews were men, making the offspring, none of them, Jews. No wonder their religion was such a mishmosh. The whole mishmoshpocha.
Yeah, it is one of the most tired Christian zingers out there–right up there with “I believe in the Big Bang theory–God said “bang” and it happened.”
Humans descended from single-cell protozoans. So why are there still single-cell protozoans?
*Now, man came from monkey,
Some folk say.
But the Good Book, brother,
Don’t tell it that way.
If you believe that monkey-tale,
Like some folk do,
I’d rather be
That monkey than you.*[indent]— Tennessee Ernie Ford[/indent]
Love the idea of this being a zinger for the scientific community.
So the first time you show a chimp to a paleoanthropologist they drop their coffee cup which smashes on the floor and exclaim:
“My God, a living fossil! No, wait, that’s not it. We…we…have been wrong all along. Apes are still here!”
To be fair, the concept of one species replacing another is a common trope in early evolution ‘bedtime stories’ and ‘just-stories’. The story of horse evolution is often depicted this way, not to mention the iconic picture of human evolution, The March of Progress:
This is basically the Hollywood and the cartooniverse depiction of evolution, as well.
For your amusement and edification, I submit:
The common ancestor was almost certainly much more like an ape than like a human. In other words the branching relationship would look like a straight branch with one side branch suddenly splitting off.