05-25-2017, 04:14 PM
Hashtag 'Oops'
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find.
'The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe
was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa.
Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million
years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before
venturing further afield.
But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in
Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.
The discovery of the creature, named Graecopithecus freybergi, and nicknameded ‘El Graeco'
by scientists, proves our ancestors were already starting to evolve in Europe 200,000 years
before the earliest African hominid.
An international team of researchers say the findings entirely change the beginning of human
history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans - the so-called
Missing Link - in the Mediterranean region.
At that time climate change had turned Eastern Europe into an open savannah which forced
apes to find new food sources, sparking a shift towards bipedalism, the researchers believe.
“This study changes the ideas related to the knowledge about the time and the place of the first
steps of the humankind,” said Professor Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences.
“Graecopithecus is not an ape. He is a member of the tribe of hominins and the direct ancestor
of homo. “The food of the Graecopithecus was related to the rather dry and hard savannah
vegetation, unlike that of the recent great apes which are living in forests.
Therefore, like humans, he has wide molars and thick enamel...'
SOURCE:
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find.
'The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe
was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa.
Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million
years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before
venturing further afield.
But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in
Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.
The discovery of the creature, named Graecopithecus freybergi, and nicknameded ‘El Graeco'
by scientists, proves our ancestors were already starting to evolve in Europe 200,000 years
before the earliest African hominid.
An international team of researchers say the findings entirely change the beginning of human
history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans - the so-called
Missing Link - in the Mediterranean region.
At that time climate change had turned Eastern Europe into an open savannah which forced
apes to find new food sources, sparking a shift towards bipedalism, the researchers believe.
“This study changes the ideas related to the knowledge about the time and the place of the first
steps of the humankind,” said Professor Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences.
“Graecopithecus is not an ape. He is a member of the tribe of hominins and the direct ancestor
of homo. “The food of the Graecopithecus was related to the rather dry and hard savannah
vegetation, unlike that of the recent great apes which are living in forests.
Therefore, like humans, he has wide molars and thick enamel...'
SOURCE:
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.