Get ready to rewrite the fossil record one more meter . investigator have reveal a 12 million year erstwhile hominid fossil from Spain , with startlingly modern facial feature article , and it may indicate our evolutionary origins are more complicated than is ordinarily live with .
The squad responsible for studying the specimen is led by Salvador Moyà - Solà , theater director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia ( ICP ) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona . He and his workfellow have drop five year examining the fossilized cranium since its uncovering in 2004 . The fragile remains , which keep most of the face and mandible , were found in the Abocador de Can Mata area in L’Anoia , Barcelona , a locale known for its fossil - rich terrain .
The specimen has been separate Anoiapithecus brevirostris . The Anoiapithecus genus touch to its L’Anoia origins , while brevirostris is in reference to its unusually modern features . The fossil has been nicknamed “ Lluc ” , probably in homage to the most famous hominid specimen , the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton acknowledge as Lucy .
It ’s the specimen ’s facial morphology that has really attracted interest . While most of the primates in the Hominidae family are prognathic , or mark by a bulge jaw , Anoiapithecus brevirostris has a remarkably flat brass . Its facial features are comparable only to the Homo genus , of which we ’re the only living representative and which did n’t even be for most ten million years after Anoiapithecus brevirostris .
That ’s not to say Lluc is some kind of time - displaced miss link between modern humans and ancient apes . Instead , the researcher muse this may be an case of evolutionary convergency , where standardized environmental precondition produce similar adaptations . If nothing else , this find may help investigator well understand the occurrence of reduced prognathism in sure Strand of the Hominidae family .
Anoiapithecus brevirostris may also serve straighten out where hominid originated . Some paleontologists have point to the kenyapithecines as the most primitive hominoids , suggesting they are the ancestors of all other hominids . These hierarch , which have been launch in Africa and Eurasia , date back to the Middle Miocene earned run average , just about the same time full point as Anoiapithecus brevirostris . However , Lluc ’s feature are a particular mix of those resemble New hominids , Eurasian kenyapithecines , and afropithecids , another group of primitive hominoids found in Africa .
In trying to make sense of this addle evolutionary genealogy , Moyà - Solà and his squad have turned to the controversial “ into Africa ” theory . This fundamentally holds that kenyapithecines initially leave Africa for Eurasia around 15 million long time ago , at which time a routine of hominid species radiated out into several region . Anoiapithecus brevirostris , which settle in Spain , would have been one of this initial wave of hominids . Later , the ancestors of homo , gorillas , and chimpanzees fall to Africa . It ’s also potential the ancestor of the swell apes and humans never left Africa , but the forebears of the pongines , which includes modern orangutans , did depart for Eurasia .
As always , there ’s only so much one can conclude from a exclusive braincase , no matter how extraordinary it might be . Anoiapithecus brevistroscomplicates an evolutionary video that was already plenty addle , but one can only desire the remain accretion of data will someday make the millions of eld of our evolutionary history a morsel clearer .
[ Science Daily ]
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