Title: Exceptional Fossil Challenges Belief on Origins of Human Ancestors
Subtitle: Turkey’s Anadoluvius turkae Suggests Hominins May Have Evolved in Europe
Date: [Date]
Byline: [Author Name]
Representational image (Khwanchai/Nazar12/1971yes/via Canva)
We did come, see, and millions of years of evolution, tool-making and fire-discovering later, we did ultimately conquer. While the end result is undoubtedly apparent, our ancestral journey remains an oft-debated topic, and one that keeps getting revised regularly as scientists unearth more fossils our human ancestors left behind.
Despite all the back-and-forth, one of the most established beliefs is the fact that our ancestors originated from Africa, eventually moving into other continents for a variety of reasons. However, a new discovery has challenged even this notion.
In 2015, scientists discovered an extraordinarily well-preserved fossil of a partial cranium in modern-day Turkey. Later analysis showed that this was no ordinary ape, and was later called the Anadoluvius turkae.
The Anadoluvius was huge — as big as an 80-kilogram female gorilla — and dwelled in open settings similar to the environs of early African humans. During its time on the planet, Anadoluvius probably lived alongside rhinos, giraffes, zebras, elephants, and even lion-like carnivores, feeding on hard and tough food items such as roots and rhizomes using their large and thickly enameled teeth.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Anadoluvius and other fossil apes from nearby Greece comprise a group that is strikingly similar, anatomically and ecologically, to the earliest known human species, or hominins.
The fact that Turkey’s 8.7-million-year-old Çorakyerler fossil site is so ancient helps add significant weight to the idea that the ancestors of humans and many African apes might have first evolved in Europe before eventually and gradually moving to Africa due to climate and other factors.
“Our findings further suggest that hominins not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests,” explains D. R. Begun, a study author. “The members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius belongs are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.”
This study also sheds light on the ancestry of many other well-known apes we share the Earth with today, including some that were thought to have originated from Africa. This has helped the Anadoluvius turkae establish itself as a branch of the evolutionary tree that gave birth to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and even many Balkan and Anatolian apes.
The authors also assert that the whole group probably evolved and diversified in Europe itself, contrasting the long-held belief that separate ape branches moved independently into Europe from Africa, before eventually going extinct.
As Begun remarks, while the remains of early hominins are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago. The study’s authors thus conclude that these findings contrast massively with the long-held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa.
The findings of this research have been published in Communications Biology and can be accessed [here].
[Note: Include information or statistics regarding the research methods, sample size, and any limitations if available.]
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