Ancestor of all apes might not be what scientists expected, new fossil shows
Source: Los Angeles Times
Ancestor of all apes might not be what scientists expected, new fossil shows
By Amina Khan
OCTOBER 29, 2015, 1:03 PM
One man's trash heap is a scientist's treasure trove. A fragmented skeleton dug out from a Spanish landfill may force scientists to redraw their theories on the ancestor of humans and all other apes.
Pliobates cataloniae, described in the journal Science, reveals that the common ancestor of humans, gorillas and gibbons may have looked more gibbon-like than previously thought.
Researchers believe that Old World monkeys and apes split off from each other around 25 million to 30 million years ago, and later the Old World apes split again into "lesser" apes (whose modern-day members include gibbons) and great apes (whose descendants today include gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans).
Filling in the gibbon lineage could help researchers understand what the ancestor to all apes looked like, but the problem is that there aren’t all that many good specimens in the fossil record, said lead author David Alba, a paleobiologist at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont in Spain.
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ape-fossil-evolution-diverge-20151029-story.html
