Turns out, humans appeared 10 million years ago, not 8 million, says new analysis by a leading paleoanthropologist.
Dr. David Begun, who's probably a real corrector at parties, says he reanalyzed Dryopithecus fossils, and that their skulls indicate they were actually apes, rather than a predecessor of apes. That also means that humans evolved earlier than was previously thought - by about 2 million years. That's when we split from chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary cousin, and went our own way.
Dryopithecus lived in what is now Europe around 12.5 million years ago, according to the new analysis, and rather than evolving earlier than great apes, are actually part of the ape family. More specifically, says Begun, they were early gorillas. The Dryopithecus skull has the characteristic angular jawline and other markings of a gorilla's head.
Before this, Dryopithecus was thought to have been the second in line in the split from the human lineage; it was Orangutans, then Dryopithecus, then gorillas, then chimps. But now that we know Dryopithecus was a gorilla, and that that lineage is all closer to humans than previously thought.
"What if Dryopithecus - that looks like a little gorilla - really was a little gorilla that had already branched off from humans?" Begun began, in conversation with New Scientist. Since we already know when gorillas split from their human and chimp cousins, we can use that information to re-date various fossils associated with Dryopithecus. And that makes molecular biologists happy.
"We on the molecular side would be more comfortable with a split of the type he's talking about," says Aylwyn Scally of the University of Cambridge, also to New Scientist. It makes more sense to them because the current molecular analysis sits Dryopithecus much closer to the timeline Begun has in mind, than to previous estimates.
Begun will present his history-altering analysis at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, in Dallas, Texas, later this month. Until the analysis can be peer reviewed by others in Begun's field, the findings will be tentative.
Via: New Scientist
