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The first ever chimpanzee fossils were late discovered in an area previously thought to be undesirable for chimps . Fossils from human ancestor were also found nearby .
Although researchers have only found a few chimp tooth , the find could make a shake - up in the theory of human evolution .
Fossilized chimpanzee incisors, characterized by their triangular shape and thickness and. These teeth are two of the first chimp fossils ever found.
“ We know today if you go to westerly and primal Africa that humans and chimps live in alike and contiguous environment , ” said Nina Jablonski , an anthropologist at the California Academy of Sciences . “ This is the first grounds in the fossil record that they coexisted in the same space in the past times . ”
It had antecedently been mean that chimp never live on in the desiccate Rift Valley — they choose more lush environments like the Congo and jungles of western Africa . For yr scientists believed that early human ancestors leave alone the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grassland and that this move have the evolutionary split between the human and chimp melodic phrase .
But now , with the uncovering of ancient chimps and humans in the same area , evolutionist may have to rethink what caused humans to become humans .
“ For many years people have used this kind of geographical rip in environment as an explanation as an origin of humans and bipedalism , ” joint author Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut toldLiveScience . “ hoi polloi have still hold back this idea of a split geographic distribution of chimps and humans . This show up it certainly was n’t true half a million years ago , and may not have been true before that . We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split . ”
Only the teeth pull through
One of the more frustrating aspects of paleontology is that full skeletons are very infrequently preserved — especially in hobo camp environs where soil acidulousness and scavengers destruct or eat bones that could otherwise become fogey .
dentition , on the other helping hand , more frequently survive . They ’re cake with thick enamel , which protects them from chemical substance attack and makes them less suitable for hungry magpie .
“ Teeth are the part of the body that gets preserved most oftentimes , ” McBrearty said . “ All things being equal , you ’re more potential to find teeth than anything else . ”
Half a million years ago , the Rift Valley was in all probability more moist and wooded than it is today . But in that clip , the lake shore that the chimps and other animals called home has dried up , produce condition good for keep up fossils .
Researchers dug up three teeth — two incisors and one grinder . Although these teeth were blend in with fossils of many other beast , they quite definitely belong to to a chimp .
“ Chimp teeth are actually very distinctive , because compared to human teeth , molars for example , they have very , very low crowns , ” Jablonski said . “ The incisor teeth at the front of the jaw are also very typical . They ’re triangular and very boneheaded – much thicker than the same tooth in a homo . ”
They also found fossilized clay of Pisces , hippopotami , antelopes , cane rats , buffalos , monkeys and other wet - loving beast . base on the presence of these creature , researcher square up the area used to be much different .
“ We know two things . First , chimp were once more widely circularize . And second , these environments have changed dramatically in the last half million years , ” Jablonski said . “ The chimps and all the other forest loving creature that lived with them became out , topically , because of this change . ”
Human ancestors nearby
Hominid fogy were also find less than a kilometer from the lake shore where the chimp fossils were buried . More significantly , they were found in sediments of the same historic period as the chimp teeth — about half a million years old .
Although not mod man , these hominids were fairly advanced as prove by the broad variety of stone peter they used .
“ These present an earlier species of human , congeneric to modern humans , but notHomo sapiens , ” Jablonski sound out . “ There ’s some controversy over what this species is called . Most would call it an advanced chassis ofHomo erectus . They looked like masses and were a fair sophisticated refinement with various stone tools and go in the same environs as humans . ”
The discovery of ancient chimps and humans live in the same expanse reach the doorway to many questions . More teeth , and perhaps even bones , may lie in the Rift Valley sediments , and line up them could help answer these question .
“ I ’m going back to seem for the rest , ” McBrearty said .
These finding are detail in the Sept. 1 issue of the journalNature .
