• Question: if our common ancester is the monkey/gorilla what would be the ancestor of plants?

    Asked by eco2 to Sam, Katie on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Wow that is a really good question. However it would depend on which plant you are asking about as there are lots of species of plant. My guess would that all plants stem from something like an algae but I am really not sure!

    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      You can see from this website a diagram called a “phylogeny” which shows the evolutionary relationship between different types of life:

      http://www.tolweb.org/eukaryotes

      This tree shows plants and animals. You can see that green plants (which is most of the plants we see around us – all the green ones!) are closely related to green algae, and then slightly more distantly related to red algae, and then slightly more distantly still related to something called a microalgae. So I would guess all plants including algae stem from something like a tiny algae.

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