News Humans

Fossils suggest tree-dwelling apes walked upright long before hominids did

The 11.6-million-year-old bones still don’t tell us how members of the genus Homo became bipeds

ancient ape bones

A partial skeleton of an 11.6-million-year-old European ape consists of 21 bones, including one from the lower leg (far right) and another from the forearm (second from right).

Christoph Jäckle

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Tree-dwelling apes in Europe strode upright around 5 million years before members of the human evolutionary family hit the ground walking in Africa.