p279

“The possibility to complexify is most widely open to the organisms that most preserve the common ancestor’s features”

 The following paper the hand of Ardipithecus ramidus  illustrates the point:

Lovejoy Careful Climbing in the Miocene: The Forelimbs of  Ardipithecus ramidus and Humans Are Primitive

Science  326 70, 70e1-70e8 (2009)

(BG) Apes must support their large body mass during climbing; this is facilitated by their elongated palms and fingers.They cannot grasp objects and compress them with great dexterity and force: power grip is impossible in contrast to us. Because their thumb has not been elongate, thumb-to-palm and thumb-to-finger oppositions are more awkward for them. We are therefore much more adept at making and using tools. 

* The  Ardipithecus skeleton reported here has virtually complete intact hand.  Ardipithecus

did not knuckle-walk; it lacked virtually all of the specializations that protect great ape hands from injury while they climb and feed in trees.

*  Ardipithecus  also shows that our ability to use and make tools did not require us to greatly modify our hands. Rather, human grasp and dexterity were long ago inherited almost directly from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees.

Bikonta controversy

In Note 5.2 and here the author adopted the Plastida-Aplastida rather than Uni-Bikonta division of Eukaryota, but this division is still controversial.

Romain Derelle and B. Franz Lang

Rooting the Eukaryotic Tree with Mitochondrial and Bacterial Proteins

MBE 29 1277 (2012)

The mitochondrial data set developed here constitutes a unique alternative means in resolving deep eukaryotic relationships.

 With the current mitochondrial data set, the branching position of the apusozoan  T. trahens  as sister group to Opisthokonta renders the proposed synapomorphy ``unikont’’ inappropriate, as Apusozoa have two basal bodies per kinetid. Note, however, that this topology is based on the inclusion of a single apusozoan species and that poor species sampling will increase the potential for phylogenetic error. The putative sister group relationship of  T. trahens  with  Malawimonas , which also has two basal bodies per kinetid (O’Kelly and Nerad 1999), is in support of this new scenario that calls for abandoning ``Unikonta’’ and ``Bikonta’’ as taxonomic terms. Yet to confirm this topology beyond reasonable doubt, a range of  Malawimonas  and apusozoan genome projects are highly desirable. Finally, a significant fraction of the known eukaryotic diversity needs to be added to phylogenomic studies, including or instance the early emerging  Diphyllatea  ( Brugerolle et al. 2002 ) and  Mantamonas  species ( Gl\”{u}cksman et al.  2011).