Pieces of jawbone and teeth found in Egypt have been identified as a new early ape species named Masripithecus moghraensis, which lived about 17 million years ago
A newly discovered ape species that lived around 17 million years ago suggests that the first apes may have evolved in North Africa, not East Africa as previously thought.at Mansoura University, Egypt, and her colleagues found teeth and jawbones from two ancient apes in deposits dated to approximately 17 million to 18 million years old.
Altogether, the team found four specimens, including the front of a mandible, or jawbone, along with two molar teeth found next to it, belonging to one individual. The other fossil is a separate mandibular fragment, with no tooth crowns, from another individual., is the closest known ancestor of all living great apes, including humans, gorillas and chimpanzees, and lesser apes such as gibbons and siamangs. Apes are distinguished from monkeys because they do not have tails.The surprise for researchers is that the fossils were found in North Africa rather than in the east of the continent, which is where the main leaps in ape evolution were previously thought to have taken place. Al-Ashqar says the “clincher” for placing the creature as a hominoid was a combination of ape-like features in the mandible, particularly where the two halves of the mandible join, called the symphysis, which shows similarities in structure to later apes. “The molars are also very telling — they are low, rounded and heavily crenulated ,” she says. “Also, the second and third molars are nearly equal in size.”is thought to have weighed about 25 kilograms, larger than monkeys from that time, and a phylogenetic analysis showed it clearly fell within the hominoid lineage, says Al-Ashqar.had a flexible diet, she says. “It likely depended mainly on fruits, but could also process harder foods like nuts and seeds, especially with that robust jaw and complex molars.”However, until limb bones are found, it is impossible to tell how it moved or whether it lived primarily in trees or on the ground., at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who was also part of the team. But they would have been about the size of a small female chimpanzee. “For decades, palaeontologists have been, to some extent, sort of stuck finding the same kinds of species in the early Miocene of East Africa. Now we know that the story was different in northern Africa,” says Seiffert.
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18 million-year-old fossils of ape found in Africa, but in an unexpected placeColin Barras is a science writer focusing on archaeology and evolutionary sciences. He has also written for New Scientist, Nature and Science among others. Colin has a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, and an MSc in science communication from Imperial College London.
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Giant armadillo, mastodon, and sloth fossils found in flooded Texas caveAndrew Paul is Popular Science's staff writer focused primarily on tech, AI, physics, and culture news. He was previously a regular contributor to The A.V. Club and Input, and has been featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. He lives outside Indianapolis.
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Early apes may not have evolved in East AfricaFossil jaw remains found in Egypt suggest that the earliest modern apes evolved in North Africa, not in East Africa where most fossils have been found.
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