A newly described fossil suggests that the ancestor of humans and apes arose in Europe, not in Africa.
An ape fossil found in Turkey may controversially suggest that the ancestors of African apes and humans first evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa, a research team says in a new study.
Study co-senior author David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, clarified that they are talking about the common ancestor of hominines, and not about the human lineage after it diverged from the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives. The fossil suggests that A. turkae likely weighed about 110 to 130 pounds , or about the weight of a large male chimpanzee.Based on the fossils of other animals found alongside it — such as giraffes, warthogs, rhinos, antelope, zebras, elephants, porcupines and hyenas — as well as other geological evidence, the researchers suggest that the newfound ape lived in a dry forest, more like where the early humans in Africa may have dwelled, rather than in the forest settings of modern great apes. A.
The researchers suggest that A. turkae and other fossil apes from nearby areas, such as Ouranopithecus in Greece and Turkey and Graecopithecus in Bulgaria, formed a group of early hominines. This may, in turn, suggest that the earliest hominines arose in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Specifically, the team contends that ancient Balkan and Anatolian apes evolved from ancestors in Western and Central Europe.
As for why"we do not find African apes in Europe today, species go extinct all the time," Begun said. However, Gilbert noted that recent comprehensive analyses of fossil great apes and early hominins — the group that includes humans and the extinct species more closely related to humans than any other animal — do not support the argument that hominines originated in Europe.
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