Newly discovered fossil challenges idea of ape origins in east Africa - study

A fossilized lower ape jaw unearthed in in the southwestern Sinai, has forced researchers to reconsider the origin of modern apes, including humans, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

The fossil, discovered at the Wadi Maghara site, belonged to a new genus and species now-named Masripithecus moghraensis (“Egyptian ape/trickster from Maghara”). Researchers have dated the bone to the Early Miocene epoch, roughly 17 to 18 million years ago.

"Discovering a fossil ape in this region is both significant and somewhat surprising," first author of the study, Shorouq Al-Ashqar, a paleontologist at Egypt’s Mansoura University, told Live Science. "But it also highlights how incomplete our picture has been."

Apes first appeared at least 25 million years ago and scientists have long assumed that they originated in East Africa before migrating across the continent, to Europe and Asia. However, the newly discovered fossils, challenge the idea, and indicate that they may have emerged farther north.

Sergio Almécija, a biological anthropologist who was not involved in the study, affirmed the find’s importance to Live Science, explaining that "any new fossil ape discovery is precious because of their scarcity, especially when it comes from a region where their presence has previously gone unnoticed.”

To figure out where M. moghraensis, the newly discovered genus and species, fit within the ape evolutionary tree, the researchers studied the age, anatomy of ape fossils and DNA of living apes.

According to the study, M. moghraensis would be placed just before the evolutionary split between the great ape and “lesser ape” group happened, implying that not only is M. moghraensis closely related to the last common ancestor of living apes, but that they both lived in the roughly the same place.

However, while he explained to Live Science he’d like to see “more complete fossils of M. moghraensis” before introducing the theory into mainstream academia, Al-Ashqar noted that “in mammalian palaeontology, dental anatomy is a cornerstone for interpreting diet and evolutionary history.”