Fossil ape makes evolutionary debut
By Bruce Bower
A roughly 13-million-year-old partial skeleton unearthed in northeastern Spain comes from a creature that, according to its discoverers, was a key evolutionary precursor of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and people.
A team led by Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Miguel Crusafont Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona has assigned the find to a new genus and species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus.
The spotty fossil record of apes that lived between 25 million and 5 million years ago consists mostly of jaw and skull fragments as well as isolated teeth. The new find is made up of an unprecedented variety of bones from a shoulder, and the face, chest, legs, hands, wrists, and upper jaw, including many teeth.