Homo troglodytes

Welcome to the family, chimps & bonobos? There's a movement afoot to bring the remaining members of the Pan genus under the Homo umbrella, according to an article in the Guardian. It has long been known that these two species have more in common with us Homo sapiens than with the other great apes and more and more genetic evidence/evolutionary evidence seems to support the reclassification. The latest evidence indicates that humans and chimps have similarly long generational timeframes (the length of a "generation" is similar) going way back in our evolutionary history and the extremely long time between human generations has apparently long been an argument for our "special" taxonomic status apart from the other great apes. The new study shows that humans and the Pan species have had similarly slow rates of genetic mutations, indicative of long times between generations. It has long been known that humans and chimps have a common ancestor not shared with gorillas or orangutans, so it has long made little sense from an evolutionary perspective to think of the "great apes" as one group and humans as a separate group.

I say it's only a matter of time before the facts overtake tradition and politics - the sooner the better.

UPDATE

This article from National Geographic, Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree...(dateline 2003), discusses the issue of reclassification in a little more detail and points out some of the difficulties, among them the confusion that can arise from the domino effect - reclassifying chimpanzees into the genus Homo would necessitate the renaming of several fossil hominids that have been assigned their own genera.