SPAIN: Scientists today report the discovery of a "missing link", a new species of great ape that helps to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of human evolution. The creature lived about 12.5 million years ago and its partial skeleton was dug up near Barcelona.
The new species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, is the best preserved and most complete skeleton yet found from this period. Details of the discovery are published in today's edition of the journal, Science.
Researchers believe that the ape-like animal may be the last common ancestor of all apes, including humans. It becomes a common point in the evolutionary path between great apes, including ourselves, and the lesser apes including gibbons.
The bones have given the research team from the Miguel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona a good impression both of what our distant cousin looked like and how it lived.
The individual was probably male and weighed around 35 kilograms. Its chest is broad and shallow like an apes compared to the narrow, deep chest of monkeys, affording it better upper limb movement for climbing trees.
Flexible wrists would have allowed it to hang easily from branches, further improving its vertical climbing ability. These characteristics also suggest upright walking, given P catalaunicus had a relatively rigid spine in the lower-back lumbar region.
"This probably is very close to the last common ancestor of great apes and humans," said Dr Mr Salvador Moya-Sola.
The great apes, which now include orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans, are thought to have diverged from the lesser apes, a group that contains modern gibbons and siamangs, about 11 to 16 million years ago.
Fossil evidence from this time period, the middle Miocene epoch, is sparse, however, and researchers have long been searching for the great ape ancestors that emerged after this split.
