2026/03/26 by Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Erik R. Seiffert, Sanaa El-Sayed +5 · 1 voice
Psychology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Primate Behavior and Ecology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1126/science.adz4102
openalex publication_date 2026/03/26 · openalex created_date 2026/03/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Early Miocene fossil record documenting hominoid evolution has long been restricted primarily to sites in East Africa, whereas contemporaneous North African sites have only yielded remains of cercopithecoid monkeys. Here, we describe a fossil ape from North Africa, a new genus ( Masripithecus ) from the Early Miocene (~17 million to 18 million years) of northern Egypt, on the basis of mandibular remains. A combined molecular-morphological Bayesian tip-dating analysis positions Masripithecus closer to crown hominoids than coeval fossil apes from East Africa, thereby filling a phylogenetic and biogeographic gap in the evolution of stem hominoids. This evidence suggests that crown Hominoidea might have originated during the Early Miocene in the underexplored northeastern part of Afro-Arabia, rather than in eastern Africa or Eurasia.