A new case of the face and partial brain of Anadoluvius turkae, a fossil hominid – the group that includes African apes and humans – from the Çorakyerler fossil site located in central Anatolia, Turkey. Credit: Sevim-Erol, A., Begun, DR, Sözer, Ç.S. et al.
Anadoluvius existed nearly 9 million years ago and is the ancestor of living African apes and humans.
The recent discovery of a fossilized ape from a site in Turkey, 8.7 million years old, challenges long-held ideas about human origins. This discovery supports the hypothesis that the ancestors of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe and then migrated to Africa around 7 to 9 million years ago.
Analysis of a newly identified monkey named Anadoluvius turkae, recovered from Çorakyerler fossil locality near Çankırı with the support of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, shows that Mediterranean fossil monkeys are diverse and part of the earliest known radiation of early hominids – the group that includes African apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas), humans and their fossil ancestors.
The results are described in a study recently published in Communications Biology co-authored by an international team of researchers led by Professor David Begun at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol from Ankara University.
“Our findings further suggest that hominids not only evolved in western and central Europe, but spent more than five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before finally dispersing into Africa, probably into due to environmental changes and diminishing forests,” said Begun, a professor in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Toronto. “Members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius belongs are currently identified only in Europe and Anatolia.”
The conclusion is based on analysis of a well-preserved partial skull discovered at the site in 2015, which includes most of the facial structure and the anterior part of the brain casing.
“The entirety of the fossil allowed us to do a broader and more detailed analysis using many characters and attributes coded in a program designed to calculate evolutionary relationships,” Begun said. “The face is largely finished, after applying mirror imaging. The new part is the forehead, with bones preserved up to about the crown of the skull. The fossils described earlier do not contain as much brain.
Excavations of Anadoluvius turkae fossil, a well-preserved partial skull discovered at the Çorakyerler fossil site in Türkiye in 2015. The fossil includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the brain casing. Credit: Ayla Sevim-Erol
The researchers say that Anadoluvius was about the size of a large male chimpanzee (50-60kg) – very large for a chimpanzee and close to the average size of a female gorilla (75-80kg) – lived in a dry forest, and probably spent a lot of time in the field.
“We don’t have limb bones, but judging from his jaws and teeth, the animals found alongside him, and the geological indicators of the environment, Anadoluvius probably lived in relatively open conditions, unlike forests. great apes,” said Sevim Erol. “It’s more like what we think was the environment for early humans in Africa. The powerful jaws and large, thick teeth suggest a diet of hard or tough foods from terrestrial sources such as roots and rhizomes.
Animals that lived with Anadoluvius are those commonly associated with today’s African grasslands and dry forests, such as giraffes, warthogs, rhinos, various antelopes, zebras, elephants, porcupines, hyenas and lion-like carnivores. Research shows that the ecological community appears to have dispersed into Africa from the eastern Mediterranean about eight million years ago.
“The origin of modern African fauna from the open areas of the eastern Mediterranean has been known for a long time and now we can add to the list of participants the ancestors of African apes and humans,” said Sevim Erol.
Çorakyerler excavation site. This colony of vertebrate fossils near Çankırı, Turkey, is one of the most important humanoid colonies in Eurasia. Thanks to almost 20 years of excavations, Çorakyerlar has taken its place among the important Upper Miocene reference localities of Anatolia and Europe with 8 orders of mammals, more than 10 families and 43 species. Credit: Ayla Sevim-Erol
The results establish Anadoluvius turkae as a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Although African apes are only known today in Africa, as are the earliest known humans, the study authors – which also include colleagues from Ege University and Pamukkale University in Turkey and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands – conclude that the ancestors of both originated in Africa. Europe and Eastern Mediterranean.
The Anadoluvius and other fossil apes of neighboring Greece (Ouranopithecus) and Bulgaria (Graecopithecus) form a group which comes closest in many details of anatomy and ecology to the earliest known hominids, or humans. The new fossils are the best-preserved specimens of this group of early hominids and provide the strongest evidence to date that this group originated in Europe and later dispersed to Africa.
The study’s detailed analysis also reveals that Balkan and Anatolian apes evolved from western and central European ancestors. With its more comprehensive data, the research provides evidence that these other apes were also hominids, meaning it’s more likely that the entire group evolved and diversified in Europe, rather than the alternative scenario. in which separate branches of monkeys previously moved independently in Europe. from Africa over several million years and then disappeared without any problem.
“There is no evidence for this last hypothesis, although it remains a favorite proposition among those who do not accept the hypothesis of a European origin,” Begun said. “These findings contrast with the long-held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa. Although early hominid remains are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they were completely absent from Africa until the first hominid appeared about seven million years ago.
“This new evidence supports the hypothesis that hominids originated in Europe and dispersed into Africa along with many other mammals between nine and seven million years ago, although this does not definitively prove it. For this, we need to find more fossils from Europe and Africa that are eight to seven million years old in order to establish a definitive link between the two groups.
Reference: “A new ape from Türkiye and the radiation of hominids from the Late Miocene” by Ayla Sevim-Erol, DR Begun, Ç. Sönmez Sözer, S. Mayda, LW van den Hoek Ostende, RMG Martin and M. Cihat Alçiçek, August 23, 2023, Communications Biology.
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05210-5
The study was funded by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Ankara University and the Historical Society Turkish.
