The following is a summary of the three layers of ERV evidence:
Layer 1: the presence of ERVs in orthologous loci among species of various degrees of taxonomic separation, and of the nested hierarchies they fall into.
Layer 2: the comparative degrees of LTR-LTR discontinuity among orthologous full-length ERVs.
Layer 3: shared mutations among orthologous ERV and the nested hierarchies they fall into.
Even just ERV evidence alone is definitive; the most parsimonious model is one in which all primates—including humans—share common ancestry
Download this reading list:
Folder with PDFs: tinyurl.com/dgenx3
9:45
8:30