Nah humans are not apes. You might as well say fish are apes as well.
Fishes are not "species", it isn't name of species.
The name "fish", isn't even taxon classification, it is informal classification, due to being paraphyletic group, not monophyletic.
While a tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) and Atlantic salmon (Salamo salar) are both fishes, they are not of the same species, not of the genera (Galeocerdo vs Salmo), not of same families (Galeocerdonidae vs Salmonidae), orders (Carcharhiniformes vs Salmoniformes), or classes (Chondrichthyes vs Actinopterygii).
And even shark is not taxon name or classification, as there are number of physical features that distinguish one species of shark from another species, eg the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias).
The tiger shark and great white are not of the same genera (Carcharodon), families (Lamnidae), order (Lamniformes); the only taxons that are the same is subclass (Elasmobranchii), class (Chondrichthyes).
You don't need to study fossils of extinct sharks or extinct salmons, to distinguish the differences between tiger sharks and Atlantic salmons.
As I said, apes (superfamily Homoinoidea, family Homoinidae "great apes") are not name for species, but classification of shared physical traits that exist in all apes.
Not all biologists are paleontologists, so they studied the living and extant species of the anatomy like their morphology (form and structure), DNA and so on, and that allow for the determination of taxon classifications.
What you see in taxon tree, is that organisms changes over generations (time), that's fact.
All life seems to have come from the ground. And water.
But not directly and magically from soil.
Soil don't contain cells, and they are mainly of silicate minerals, which are inorganic. You cannot simply transform silicates into proteins.
A large of all life are made from cells that make up proteins, and for multicellular organisms like animals, proteins are building blocks of tissues and organs, and proteins are made of amino acids, so not silicates from soil.
Amino acids are made of carbon-based molecules (including hydrogen, oxygen), while silicates are made of silicon-based molecules. And silicon cannot turn into carbon.
That's just chemistry, and soil cannot turn into fully grown human, as you (and other creationists) clearly don't seem to understand.
Miracles defied natural reality, like Jesus turning water into wine. Water cannot chemically turn into wine, not unless involve fairytale magic. Wine come from grape juice that have been fermented over a period of time. What Gospel of John narrated about this miracle is simply not real, nor natural.