does our common ancestor with apes had unspecialized hands like us or specialized hands to live on trees ?

Question

does our common ancestor with apes had unspecialized hands like us or specialized hands to live on trees ?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Our hands are highly specialised.

They are built around the opposable thumb, which (afaik) is unique to apes and man. (And since we both have it, our common ancestor probably did too)

While I dont have a background in this I would suggest the opposable thumb to originally be aimed at grasping branches and later refined for finemotor control to facilitate tool usage.

So. I think we are basically still in tree mode, add a prehensile tail (can grip), lengthen the arm and we’d be right at home.