An almost perfect 29m-year-old fossilised skull from one of humankind's earliest ancestors has been unearthed in Egypt.
The specimen is from a young female that lived in the early Oligocene, a period of global cooling, volcanic eruptions and seismic disturbance, driven by the collision of the Indian and Asian continental plates. The skull, from a species known as Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, or dawn ape, is the most complete and well-preserved known and only the second to be found.
Researchers led by the Egyptian Geological Museum in Cairo uncovered the fossilised remains in a quarry on the outskirts of the city and were able to perform detailed x-ray scans of the skull, revealing the size and shape of the brain.
The skull was half the size of the first dawn ape skull, a male found in 1966, suggesting modern apes and monkeys developed larger brains later in evolution.
Elwyn Simons, a primatologist on the team from Duke University, North Carolina, said the skull weighed about 5.5lbs (2.5kg). Measurements led the scientists to believe it was capable of forming large social troops similar to those seen in modern day primates. The shape of the eye sockets suggest the species was active during the daytime, like modern apes.
Fossils of dawn ape have been found in two quarries about half a mile apart on the Fayum depression near Cairo. While it is now arid, scientists believe it was a flourishing rain forest when they were alive.
Labels: Great Discoveries
