A new anthropological research claims that orangutans are more closely related to humans than chimpanzees, which are commonly touted as our closest animal relative.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz, of the University of Pittsburgh said: “What I’ll be happy with is if people actually think out of the box and consider alternative theories of human relationships with apes,”

Most ape-human research has focused on DNA and the overwhelming majority of these studies have given very strong support to excluding orangutans from the human-chimp-gorilla group.

However, fossil evidence shows 28 shared features including reproductive systems, tooth structures and mouth palates, compared to just 2 in chimpanzees.

The molecular evidence that scientists commonly cite to demonstrate the link between humans and chimps is flawed, Schwartz said.

“Only 2 percent of the entire human genome can be verified,” he said. “But people are saying that chimps and humans share 98 percent of some portion of that 2 percent to make their case.”

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