BBC Earth
Image: Ghedoghedo
About seven million years ago, human evolution was just getting started in east Africa. But thousands of kilometres to the north, another ape empire was in its death throes.
Europe had been home to several species of ape since about 17 million years ago. Some researchers even think important events in ape evolution happened in Europe. But by seven million years ago all but one of these apes had vanished.
An Italian ape called Oreopithecus was the last species standing from Europe’s golden age of apes. Arguably, it was the strangest of the lot.
Oreopithecus has been puzzling researchers ever since its discovery in the rocks of Tuscany and Sardinia late in the 19th Century. Its fossil bones tell the story of an animal that did not look or act like its European ape ancestors.
Instead, Oreopithecus seems to have been oddly like an early member of our human lineage, even though it does not belong on our branch of the ape evolutionary tree. Read more on the BBC Earth website…
