Quote:Human and ape ancestors arose in Europe, not in Africa, controversial study claims

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. The proposal breaks
with the conventional view that hominines -the group that includes humans, the African apes (chimps,
bonobos and gorillas) and their fossil ancestors -originated exclusively in Africa.

However, the discovery of several hominine fossils in Europe and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) has already
led some researchers to argue that hominines first evolved in Europe. This view suggests that hominines
later dispersed into Africa between 7 million and 9 million years ago.

tudy 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.

"Since that divergence, most of human evolutionary history has occurred in Africa," Begun told Live Science.
"It is also most likely that the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged from each other in Africa."

In the new study, the researchers analyzed a newly identified ape fossil from the 8.7 million-year-old site
of Çorakyerler in central Anatolia. They dubbed the species Anadoluvius turkae. "Anadolu" is the modern
Turkish word for Anatolia, and "turk" refers to Turkey.

The fossil suggests that A. turkae likely weighed about 110 to 130 pounds (50 to 60 kilograms), 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. turkae's powerful jaws and large, thickly enameled teeth suggest that it may have dined on hard or tough
foods such as roots, so A. turkae likely spent a great deal of time on the ground.

In the new study, the scientists focused on a well-preserved partial skull uncovered at the site in 2015. This
fossil includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the braincase, the area where the brain sat
-features that helped the team calculate evolutionary relationships. "I was able to reconstruct and see for the
first time the face of an ancestor of ours no one had ever seen before," Begun said.

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.

Evolutionary questions
One question these findings raise is why, if hominines arose in Europe, they are no longer there, except for
recently arrived humans, and why ancient hominines did not also disperse into Asia, Begun said. "Evolution
is not very predictable," Begun said. "It happens as a series of unrelated and random events interact. We can
assume that the conditions were not right for apes to move into Asia from the eastern Mediterranean in the
late Miocene, but they were right for a dispersal into Africa."

As for why "we do not find African apes in Europe today, species go extinct all the time," Begun said.

Begun also cautioned that he did not want this research misinterpreted or misused to suggest that Eurasia
was somehow of primary importance in human evolution. Instead, "we need to know where the common
ancestor of African apes and humans evolved so that we can begin to understand the circumstances of
this evolution," he said. "Between 14 million and 7 million years ago, the areas in which apes were found
in Europe, Asia and Africa were different ecologically, just as many regions in these continents differ today.
Knowing the ecological conditions in which our ancestors evolved is critical to understanding our origins."



A different take
This new discovery "expands our understanding of a group that appears closely related to living African
apes and humans," Christopher Gilbert, a paleoanthropologist at Hunter College of City University of New
York who did not participate in this study, told Live Science.

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.

"Many other experts investigating the evolutionary relationships of fossil and living great apes using more
modern methods and including more [groups] find that many of the European apes branched off before
orangutans, making them likely distant relatives of living African great apes and humans," Gilbert said.

"Furthermore, these more comprehensive analyses suggest that apes like Anadoluvius are just as likely
or more likely to be recent immigrants to the Mediterranean from Africa rather than migrating back into
Africa," Gilbert added.

Fossil hominines like A. turkae aren't found in Africa largely because "we have a poor African fossil record
in general during this time," Gilbert said. "I am reminded of the old paleontological axiom -'absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence.'" However, Begun argued that an absence of hominine fossils in
Africa was telling and supported the idea that hominines originated elsewhere.

In any case, both Begun and Gilbert noted that future fieldwork in Africa and Eurasia looking for fossil
apes would potentially help clarify this matter. The scientists detailed their findings Aug. 23 in the
journal Communications Biology...'

(08-31-2023, 07:02 PM)BIAD Wrote: Oooh, this is gonna smart!

Quote:Human and ape ancestors arose in Europe, not in Africa, controversial study claims

...

Evolutionary questions
One question these findings raise is why, if hominines arose in Europe, they are no longer there, except for
recently arrived humans, and why ancient hominines did not also disperse into Asia, Begun said. "Evolution
is not very predictable," Begun said. "It happens as a series of unrelated and random events interact. We can
assume that the conditions were not right for apes to move into Asia from the eastern Mediterranean in the
late Miocene, but they were right for a dispersal into Africa."

As for why "we do not find African apes in Europe today, species go extinct all the time," Begun said.

...

Live Science:

Explains why pure sub-Saharan Africans have no Neanderthal DNA, and why no Neanderthal remains have ever been discovered in sub-Saharan Africa.  

They could have been one Hell-of-a Slave Race Hybrid !!