New research suggests that no matter what we eventually determine the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees to be, we’ll learn it was a primate that climbed trees.

Humans and chimpanzees began their separate evolutionary paths between 6 and 7 million years ago when they split from the last common ancestor (LCA) they shared. Debate about the LCA hinges in part on the tree-dwelling environment from which humans emerged – which involved living among the high-up horizontal branches or being able to get there from the ground, or, more likely, both.