Our second-largest chromosome is two chromosomes for our chimp relatives. They merged - but when? Cue Barbara Poszewiecka, Krzysztof Gogolewski, Paweł Stankiewicz & Anna Gambin: about a million years ago.
Note that where a chromosome be merged, this makes an animal with that chromosome infertile with those animals without. Consider the donkey and the horse. Sometimes there might be issue, but the issue will have (effectively) a trisomy; that issue isn't breeding... at all. This separated our ancestors from... whatever else was there. We separated our selves into tribes against the others because we had no choice. We became human.
This merger was already in effect for Neander/Denisova. Both are sequenced well-enough by now, I believe. The modern-human / Neander-Denisova split is here also dated: 812,000 years ago
so, like, 810 kBC.
To be asked next is the merger between Denisova and yet another now-relic. Did that relic have our Chromosome 2? How about the archaic ghosts in the West African genome today?
BACKDATE 10/18
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