Science, especially evolutionary sciences, can only proceed from learning about theories of hypotheses that do not stand the test of time. - Jeffrey H. Schwartz

There has been little morphological evidence offered since Darwin in support of the relatedness of humans and one or both of the African apes, but that, when the relationships among the extant humanoids are investigated cladistically in an evaluation of more than 200 morphological features, there are well over twice as many morphological synapomorphies in support of uniting humans with the orang-utan as with the African ape clad and very few in support of uniting the chimpanzee more closely with humans than with the gorilla.

The smaller the mammal, the more it is confined to smaller geographic areas. A small mammal is also more susceptible to subtle changes in climate and environment. ...On average, the absence or presence of smaller species provides more precise clues to past conditions in an area than does the information gained from study of the bone assemblages of the larger animals.

The often heated and sometimes nasty debates that have taken place between gradualists and punctuationists, or between micromutationists and macromutationists, have been generated by the perception that there is only one evolutionary question, for which... there can be only one correct answer. ...But if we take a different approach, and assume that both sides of a typical evolutionary debate have something valid to offer, then the theoretical and methodological disagreements between different schools of thought may just be a matter of having the right answer to a different question.