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For an explanation of very similar terms, see
Hominid.
Hominini is the tribe of Homininae that comprises humans (Homo), and two species of the genus Pan (common chimpanzees and bonobos), their ancestors, and the extinct lineages of their common ancestor. Members of the tribe are called hominins (cf. Hominidae, "hominids"). The subtribe Hominina is the "human" branch, including genus Homo and its close relatives, but not Pan.
The creation of this taxon is the result of the current idea that the least similar species of a trichotomy should be separated from the other two. Through DNA comparison, scientists believe the Pan/Homo divergence was completed between 5.4 to 6.3 million years ago, after an unusual process of speciation that ranged over four million years.[1] Few fossil specimens on the Pan side of the split have been found, the first fossil chimpanzee discovery being published in 2005,[2] dating to between 545 ± 3 kyr (thousand years) and 284 ± 12 kyr via 40Ar/39Ar, from Kenya's East African Rift Valley. All of the extinct genera listed in the table to the right are ancestral to Homo, or are offshoots of such. However, both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to humans, bonobos, and common chimpanzees.
In the proposal of Mann and Weiss (1996),[3] the tribe Hominini includes Pan as well as Homo, but as separate subtribes. Homo (and, by inference, all bipedal apes) is in the subtribe Hominina, while Pan is in the subtribe Panina.
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