'Original' great ape discovered :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4014351.stm

Scientists have unearthed remains of a primate that could have been ancestral
not only to humans but to all great apes, including chimps and gorillas. The
partial skeleton of this 13-million-year-old "missing link" was found by
palaeontologists working at a dig site near Barcelona in Spain. Details of the
sensational discovery appear in Science magazine. The new specimen was probably
male, a fruit-eater and was slightly smaller than a chimpanzee, researchers say.


The fossil has been described as a "missing link" It's very impressive
because of its completeness


Palaeontologists were just getting started at the dig when a bulldozer churned
up a tooth. Further investigation yielded one of the most complete ape skeletons
known from the Miocene Epoch (about 22 to 5.5 million years ago). Salvador
Moyà-Solà of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona and
colleagues subsequently found parts of the skull, ribcage, spine, hands and
feet, along with other bones. They have assigned it to an entirely new family
and species: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus.

Monkey business

Great apes are thought - on the basis of genetic and other evidence - to have
separated from another primate group known as the lesser apes some time between
11 and 16 million years ago (The lesser apes include gibbons and siamang). It is
fascinating, therefore, for a specimen like Pierolapithecus to turn up right in
this window.

Scientists think the creature lived after the lesser apes went their own
evolutionary way, but before the great apes began their own diversification into
different forms such as orang-utans, gorillas, chimps and, of course, humans.
"Pierolapithecus probably is, or is very close to, the last common ancestor of
great apes and humans," said Professor Moyà-Solà.


The new ape's ribcage, lower spine and wrist display signs of specialised
climbing abilities that link it with modern great apes, say the researchers.
The overall orthograde - or upright - body design of this animal and modern-day
great apes is thought to be an adaptation to vertical climbing and suspending
the body from branches. The Miocene ape fossil record is patchy; so finding such
a complete fossil from this time period is unprecedented. "It's very impressive
because of its completeness," David Begun, professor of palaeoanthropology at
the University of Toronto, Canada, told the BBC News website. "I think the
authors are right that it fills a gap between the first apes to arrive in Europe
and the fossil apes that more closely resemble those living today."

Planet of the apes

Other scientists working on fossil apes were delighted by the discovery. But not
all were convinced by the conclusions drawn by the Spanish researchers.
Professor Begun considers it unlikely that Pierolapithecus was ancestral to
orang-utans. "I haven't seen the original fossils. But there are four or five
important features of the face, in particular, that seem to be closer to African
apes," he explained. "To me the possibility exists that it is already on the
evolutionary line to African apes and humans."


Professor David Pilbeam, director of the Peadbody Museum in Cambridge, US, was
even more sceptical about the relationship of Pierolapithecus to modern great
apes: "To me it's a very long stretch to link this to any of the living apes,"
he told the BBC News website. "I think it's unlikely that you would find
relatives of the apes that live today in equatorial Africa and Asia up in
Europe. "But it's interesting in that it appears to show some adaptations
towards having a trunk that's upright because it's suspending itself [from
branches]. "It also has some features that show quadrupedal (four-legged)
behaviour. Not quadrupedal in the way chimps or gorillas are, but more in the
way that monkeys are - putting their fingers down flat," he explained. During
the Miocene, Earth really was the planet of the apes. As many as 100 different
ape species roamed the Old World, from France to China in Eurasia and from Kenya
to Namibia in Africa.



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