http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/nati...sil041118.html
Paleontologists say fossil may be ancestor to great apes
Last Updated Thu, 18 Nov 2004 15:32:27 EST
BARCELONA - A fossilized ape that was adept at climbing trees and stood upright was the last probable ancestor to great apes, including humans, researchers said Thursday.
The 13-million-year-old fossil provides a missing link between earlier, primitive apes and more modern creatures.
Undated artist's reconstruction of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, an ancient ape that may have been the last common ancestor of modern great apes
(AP Photo/Science Magazine)
Scientists say the living great apes like humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans split from the lesser apes, such as gibbons and siamangs, about 14 million to 16 million years ago.
Salvador Moya-Sola of the Miguel Crusafont Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona and his colleagues found 83 bones and fragments from the fossilized ape at an excavation site near Barcelona.
The fossil's ribcage or thorax is wide and flat like in modern great apes, the researchers wrote.
"The thorax is the most important anatomical part of this fossil, because it's the first time that the modern ape-like thorax has been found in the fossil record," said Moya-Sola in a release.
The creature, called Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, had a stiff lower spine and flexible wrists suited to climbing trees, the pair said in Friday's issue of the Science magazine.
Ape-like features
The fossil evidence suggests the creature did not walk on four limbs with a chimp-like posture, but kept its trunk upright with shoulder blades lying along its back like in humans.
Its anatomy points to an animal that could swing through trees with ease but lacked the curved fingers of an orangutan for hanging on, the researchers said.
The specimen is likely a male, weighing about 35 kilograms. The shape of its tooth suggests it ate fruit. The skull is ape-like with a sloped face.
Moya-Sola said the ape likely lived in both Europe and Africa, which he called the "factory of primates."
The team has also uncovered a tooth elsewhere and expects to find other similar fossils.
The newly discovered species or its close relative "may have been the last common ancestor of all living great apes, or close to that ancestor," said Brooks Hanson, deputy editor for physical sciences at Science magazine.
The research needs to be confirmed more rigorously before accepting the fossil's evolutionary relationship to other species, anthropology Prof. David Strait of the University at Albany told the Associated Press.
Written by CBC News Online staff
2004-11-23, 12:06 PM
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