Our ancient human ancestors may not have split from chimpanzees in the grassland of East Africa , but in Europe rather . Researchers canvas fossils of an ancient species of imitator unwrap in Greece and Bulgaria take to have found grounds that the two lineages had already deviate by the clip it was active in the Mediterranean , upending what we traditionally thought .
It all hinges on the fossils of an ancient copycat known asGraecopithecus freybergi . Known from two disjoined fogy of tooth and fond jaws discovered in the Balkans , the researcher are indicate that the morphology of these teeth show that chimpanzee and humans had already split in Europe some 7.2 million years ago .
“ While great apes typically have two or three separate and diverging roots , the beginning ofGraecopithecusconverge and are partially immix – a feature of speech that is characteristic of modern humanity , former humans and several pre - world includingArdipithecusandAustralopithecus , ” explain Professor Madelaine Böhme , who go the research published inPLOS ONE . This , she propose , shows that our lineage had already deviate from that of chimp 100 of 1000 of geezerhood before it was mean to have come about in Africa .
The history of our species , and apes in general , is complicated and controversial . There are thought to be around 23 metal money of imitator alive today , spread across Central Africa and Southeast Asia . While ancient ape species have been let out in other parts of the Old World , the history of chimps and humans is firmly frozen in Africa .
But this late written report questions the details of this tale . It claims that rather than this divergence occur in the grasslands of East Africa , it may rather have occurred in the Mediterranean . This would mean that the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzee lived in the Balkans , before splitting and both mintage then finding its direction back into fundamental and Eastern Africa .
This is likely to be a extremely controversial title , not least because it complicates things somewhat . It has traditionally been believe that humans and chimps pop off their separate way as the grasslands in East Africa developed and a new mintage of pre - human evolved to take advantage of this , finally giving rise to us .
In a second paper published inPLOS ONE , the researchers are saying that these driving force may well have been the same , but that it really fall out on a newly form savannah in Eastern Europe around the time thatGraecopithecuswas stray .
There is no doubt break to be quite a mo of contention towards these two papers , though it may also set up a clean amount of interesting discussion about what we often think is found fact .
