Fossil finds amplify Europe’s status as a hotbed of great ape evolution

Two lines of ancient apes, including what may be the smallest great ape yet, lived alongside each other in Europe, fossils discovered in a Bavarian clay pit indicate. It’s the first time that different species of ape, each with a distinctive body style and diet, have been found coexisting outside of Africa, researchers say.

Germany’s Hammerschmiede site previously yielded 11.6-million-year-old fossils of Danuvius guggenmosi (SN: 11/6/19). That creature, categorized as an extinct great ape, gained fame as possibly the oldest known upright walker, a team led by paleontologist Madelaine Böhme of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany reported at the time.

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