For decades, common scientific knowledge has held that homo sapiens—human beings as we know them today—evolved in Africa some 200,000 years ago. But a new fossil discovery in another part of the world seemingly flips that notion on its head.
Scientists recently identified a new fossil ape, which they named Anadoluvius turkae, at an 8.7 million-year-old site near Çankırı in northern Turkey. The findings were first published in the Nature Communications Biology journal as research into this possible ancestor is ongoing.
The research, study co-author David Begun said, "suggest[s] 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."
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Anadoluvius is believed to have been the size of a large male chimpanzee and weighed between 110 and 130 pounds. For comparison, an average female gorilla is around the same size and usually weighs between 165 and 175 pounds. In studying the fossil, the team found that Anadoluvius might have lived in a dry forest environment and not been a tree-swinging primate like some of its genetic relatives.
"We have no limb bones but judging from its jaws and teeth, the animals found alongside it, and the geological indicators of the environment, Anadoluvius probably lived in relatively open conditions, unlike the forest settings of living great apes. More like what we think the environments of early humans in Africa were like," study lead author Sevim Erol said, per Earth.com.
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While the study suggests humans might not have originated in Africa, more research needs to be done into this phenomenon as other fossils could be potentially discovered.
"Hominines may have originated in Eurasia during the late Miocene, or they may have dispersed into Eurasia from an unknown African ancestor," the study concluded. "The diversity of hominins in Eurasia suggests an in situ origin but does not exclude a dispersal hypothesis."
