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How humans lost their tails — and why the discovery took 2.5 years to publish

An elegant run of experiments in mice reveals the genetic changes that led humanity’s ape ancestors to lose the appendage.
  1. Ewen Callaway
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A young Geoffroy's spider monkey, also known as the black-handed spider monkey.

Primates with tails lack a certain DNA insertion in a gene called TBXT. Credit: Mark Newman/Getty

“Where’s my tail?”

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Nature 627, 15-16 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00610-x

Read the related News & Views: ‘Mobile DNA explains why humans don’t have tails’.

References

  1. Xia, B. et al. Nature 626, 1042–1048 (2024).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Xia, B. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.14.460388 (2021).

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