HHMI News: Analysis Uncovers Critical Stretches of Human Genome: "�What really surprised us was that when we included the chicken genome in this comparison, we found that nearly all these regions still showed amazingly high levels of conservation,� he said. �In 29 cases it was 100%. This, despite the fact that the common ancestor of chickens, rodents, and humans is thought to have lived about 300 million years ago,� he said."