Specialists have new food for hypotheses
A new ancient monkey, whose fossils were found during excavations in Turkey, challenges the history of human origin.
An 8.7 million-year-old monkey fossil discovered recently in Turkey is inspiring scientists to reassess long-standing theories about human evolution, according to Arkeonews.
A study published in Communications suggests that the ancestors of African great apes and humans may have evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.
An analysis of a recently identified ape named Anadoluvius turkae, discovered at the Chorakyerler fossil site near Cankırı with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, shows that Mediterranean ape fossils are diverse and are part of the first known group of early hominins, a group that includes African apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas), humans and their fossil ancestors.
The results are described in a new study published in the journal Communications Biology, co-authored by an international team of researchers led by Professor David Begun from the University of Toronto and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol from the University Ankara.
“Our results also suggest that hominins not only evolved in Western and Central Europe, but also spent more than five million years there, evolving and spreading across the Eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, likely as a result of environmental change. environment and deforestation,” says David Begun, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Art and Science. “Representatives of this branch, to which Anadoluvius belongs, are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.”
The conclusion is based on the analysis of a significantly well-preserved part of the skull, discovered at the excavation site in 2015, which includes most of the facial structure and the anterior part of the meninges.
“The completeness of the fossil allowed us to make broader and more detailed analyzes using the many symbols and attributes that are encoded in a program designed to calculate evolutionary relationships,” says Begun. – The face is mostly complete after mirroring is applied. The new part is the forehead, with bone preserved to about the top of the skull. Previously described fossils do not have such a large portion of the meninges.”
Researchers say Anadoluvius was about the size of a large male chimpanzee (50-60 kg) — very large for a chimpanzee and close to the average size of a female gorilla (75 -80 kg) — lived in a dry forest and probably spent a lot of time on the ground.
“We don’t have limb bones, but judging by his jaws and teeth, the animals found near him, and the geological evidence of the environment, Anadoluvius probably lived in relatively open environments, in contrast to the forest habitats of great apes,” says Sevim Erol. “More like what we think the environment of early humans in Africa was like. Powerful jaws and large teeth covered in thick enamel suggest a diet that includes solid foods from above ground sources such as roots and rhizomes.”
The animals that lived near Anadoluvius are those commonly associated today with African grasslands and dry forests, such as giraffes, warty pigs, rhinos, a variety of antelopes, zebras, elephants, porcupines, hyenas, and lion-like predators. Research indicates that the ecological community appears to have dispersed across Africa from the eastern Mediterranean approximately eight million years ago.
“The origin of modern African open country fauna from the eastern Mediterranean has been known for a long time, and now we can add to the list of participants the ancestors of African apes and humans,” notes Sevim Erol.
The findings suggest that Anadoluvius turkea is a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Although African apes are today only known from Africa, like the earliest known humans, the authors of the study, which also include colleagues from Ege University and the University of Pamukkale in Turkey and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, concluded that the ancestors of both came from Europe. and the eastern Mediterranean.
Anadoluvius and other fossil great apes from nearby Greece (ouranopithecus) and Bulgaria (Grekopithecus) form a group that, in many details of anatomy and ecology, is closest to the earliest known hominins, or humans. The new fossils are the best-preserved examples of this group of early hominins and provide the strongest evidence to date that this group originated in Europe and later spread across Africa.
A detailed analysis of the study also shows that the Balkan and Anatolian great apes are descended from ancestors in Western and Central Europe. With more complete data, the study provides evidence that these other great apes were also hominins, and means that it is more likely that the entire group evolved and diversified in Europe, rather than the alternative scenario in which individual branches of great apes previously independently migrated to Europe. out of Africa for a few million years before becoming extinct without issue.
“There is no evidence for the latter, although it remains a favorite proposition among those who do not accept the European origin hypothesis,” Begun said. “These results contradict the long held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa. While early hominin remains are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago. These new data support the hypothesis that hominins originated in Europe and spread throughout Africa along with many other mammals between nine and seven million years ago, although they do not conclusively prove this. To do this, we need to find more fossils from Europe and Africa, between eight and seven million years old, in order to establish a definitive link between these two groups.”