Did Scientists Just Discover the Last Common Ancestor of All Apes?

Fossils of ancient apes are even rarer than those of ancient humans , so very little is experience about these significant evolutionary missing link . The unexpected discovery of a 13 million - year - sure-enough babe ape skull in Kenya is offering a tantalizing glimpse of a new metal money that lived well before humans and apes embark upon their very unlike evolutionary paths .

To say that scientists know very little about ancient imitator would be a gross understatement . An astounding dearth of paleontological evidence be for the Miocene flow , an of import era that ran from 23 to five million age ago . It was during this vital meter that naive apes begin to diversify , adapting to novel environments and spreading from Africa into Eurasia .

Paleontologists have found bits of tooth and jaws from aper that lived during the Miocene , but trace of their skull and limbs are exceptionally rare . Three specimen of note include a 25 million - year - previous mandibula chance in Tanzania ( which technically falls outside the Miocene era ) , an 11 million - twelvemonth old crushed skull of an imitator recognize as Oreopithecus , and a 7 million - year - old ape skull with an integral braincase , belonging to the genus Sahelanthropus . That ’s passably much it . Paleontologists have yet to find a complete ape skull in Africa between 17 and 7 million age ago , and no skulls whatsoever between 14 and 10 million years ago .

That has now changed with the remarkable breakthrough of a 13 - million - twelvemonth - honest-to-goodness baby copycat skull in the Napudet deposits of northern Kenya . Ina new studypublished today in Nature , a Stony Brook University research squad led by Isaiah Nengo describe the nearly sodding skull , register a number of adaptations that would go on to tempt ape and human evolutionary histories . This newly - described species of ape , dubbed Nyanzapithecus alesi ( or just Alesi for forgetful ) , lived long before modernistic imitator and humans vary along separate evolutionary path ( human being split from apes around six to seven million twelvemonth ago ) , but the discovery suggest at what the earliest true ape must have looked like . What ’s more , the researcher propose that the genus to which this anthropoid species belong to , Nyanzapithecus , is the close affair we know to the last usual ascendent of all last ape .

Analysis of this diminutive skull show that this ancient mintage was more scalawag - like than it was ape - similar . If anything , Alesi resembled modern gibbons — a rapscallion - like ape from southeast Asia . ( significantly , Alesi is not a verbatim gibbon ascendent , so this is a possible example ofconvergent development , where traits egress independently across isolated species . )

The geological dating of the skull was done by analyzing the rock and roll layer from which the fogey was rend , and by mensurate the atomic number 18 isotopes . Using X - ray synchrotron microtomography , the researchers were able to produce 3D trope of the infant skull , and peer inside the dodo .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

The infant ’s baby tooth were missing due to the fossilization operation , but its unerupted adult tooth and molar root continue entire . The sex of the specimen could not be determined , but it was about 16 month one-time when it die . The researchers established this age by counting the layer within the fossilized dental anatomical structure , a cognitive operation akin to counting tree diagram annulus . This dental analysis set aside the researchers to link this specimen to a genus known as Nyanzapithecus — a “ sister ” radical of hominids that admit gibbons , great copycat , and humans , and a possible last common ancestor of all living apes ( more on this in just a bit ) .

The nearly - complete skull provide the researcher with a uncommon chance to study the braincase of this ancient ape . depth psychology of this specimen ’s braincase shows that , had it grown to adulthood , it would ’ve count about 25 Cypriot pound ( 11.3 kilo ) . As noted , it looked very much like a Hylobates lar , feature a diminutive oral fissure and nose relative to its headspring size of it . But unlike gibbons , it had a markedly minuscule semicircular canal in its pinna , which primates use for orientation and the perception of motion ( particularly when they ’re flinging themselves from leg to outgrowth ) . This ancient emulator , therefore , was not some tree - swinging monkey , but rather a slower , less agile primate . At this critical level in evolutionary account , apes were already moving away from a purely arboreal existence . This evidence powerfully suggests that Alesi was a unfeigned ape that lived after the split from monkeys .

“ [ We ] roll in the hay that [ Alesi ’s ] skull combines some modern great ape and Edward Gibbon traits with other more archaic traits , ” say Brenda Benefit , an anthropologist at New Mexico State University , who was n’t involved in the study . “ We cognize from the ear that [ Alesi and Nyanzapithecines ] did not predate the monkey - anthropoid divergence as some had thought it might . That was important to bang . ”

William Duplessie

David R. Begun , a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto , say the study is very exhaustive , and he likes the psychoanalysis of dental development , brain size , and interior ear anatomy , but he feel Nengo and colleagues overreached with some of their conclusions . In particular , Begun does n’t check that Nyanzapithecines should be recognized as a distinct group , or that they were more modern than other known archpriest from the time , namely Proconsul ( an extinct genus of primates that live between 23 to 25 million years ago ) and Ekembo ( a similar genus that lived 20 to 17 million years ago ) .

“ The authors claim that Nyanzapithecus is the closest thing we live to the last common ancestor of all living aper , ” Begun told Gizmodo . “ I am disbelieving because I suppose that other Miocene apes such as Proconsul and Ekembo are also good candidate . The new specimen is remarkably concluded and does enjoin us a lot about how these early apes spring up ( more like animation monkeys than like living apes ) and about mastermind size in other apes ( again , more monkey - like than ape - like . ) “

As Begun points out , the oldest known fossil of Nyanzapithecus is over 17 million years older , so this new coinage is a late live on fellow member of that linage .

Starship Test 9

“ It therefore does not mean that the last common ancestor of all life apes inhabit 13 million years ago , the age of this dodo , ” say Begun . “ It was much old than that . ”

So the debate continues , as does the palaeontology . The only way to finally subside this debate once and for all is to retrieve more fogy evidence , which , base on precedence , wo n’t be easy . It could be another generation before another fossil like Nyanzapithecus alesi is discovered .

[ Nature ]

Lilo And Stitch 2025