Mankind might have walked out of Africa but their ape ancestors walked in there from Europe, a new study claims. A new ape from nearly nine million years ago has been discovered in Turkey and is related to living African apes and humans. The findings underscores a theory that apes developed in Europe for around five million years before migrating into Africa where modern humans developed.
The ape, Anadoluvius turkae, is around 8.7 million years old, about the size of a female gorilla and probably lived on the ground in a dry forest setting. It was surrounded by what we now call African animals such as giraffes, wart hogs, rhinos, antelopes, zebras, elephants, porcupines, hyenas and lion-like carnivores.
