A 13 - million - year - old infant's skull, discovered in Africa in 2014, comes from a new species of ape that may not be far removed from the common
ancestor of living apes and humans.
N. alesi and its close relatives probably evolved some time just before the common
ancestor of all living apes.
A 13 million - year - old skull from Kenya, described in August in Nature, hints at what a common
ancestor of all living apes (including humans) looked like.
The discovery in Kenya of a remarkably complete fossil ape skull reveals what the common
ancestor of all living apes and humans may have looked like.
Not exact matches
The universe is 13.7 billion years old (cosmology: best estimate based on available data)- nothing to do with Atheism The earth is 4.5 billion years old (cosmology: best estimate based on available data)- nothing to do with Atheism
Life emerged from non-
life (Biogenesis theory... cause and process unknown)- nothing to do with Atheism
Life spread and diversified through evolution (best available explanation)- nothing to do with Atheism Man evolved from common
ape ancestor (evolution science)- nothing to do with Atheism Consciousness is an emergent property
of the brain (neuroscience)- nothing to do with Atheism Emotions, memories and intelligence are functions
of the brain (neuroscience)- nothing to do with Atheism Morals are emergent qualities
of social animals (natural science)- nothing to do with Atheism
That means that although it can give scientists a rough idea
of what the common
ancestor to all
living apes and humans would have looked like, drawing other meaningful conclusions could be challenging.
For the first two thirds
of our history, the size
of our
ancestors» brains was within the range
of those
of other
apes living today.
On the contrary, the findings
of this new study suggest that the
ancestor of all
apes lived in an environment that favored a gibbon - like size, an
ape of about five kilograms.
«It seems likely that these parasites co-evolved with African
apes, suggesting that the
ancestors of bonobos were infected, and implying that most wild -
living communities
of bonobos have somehow lost their malaria parasites,» said coauthor Paul Sharp, PhD, an evolutionary biologist from the University
of Edinburgh.
This showed researchers that bipedal walking was a key trait
of humans and our
ancestors, the group called hominins — but not
of living apes and their
ancestors.