Photo: DPAThe lineage of humans and apes possibly split at a point several hundred thousand years earlier than currently assumed - and in the eastern Mediterranean rather than sub-Saharan Africa, a German research team claim. That makes the fossils older than the oldest human ancestor known in Africa - the Sahelanthropus, which is six to seven million years old. Böhme further explained to The Local that her team had found proof for the mechanism by which human ancestors split from those of chimpanzees. "We have found evidence of a desert which emerged in the region of North Africa, which split human ancestors from those of chimpanzees. This also fits with the fossils of ancestors of giraffes, gazelles, antelopes and rhinoceroses that were found,” said Nikolai Spassov, co-author of the research.

Source: The Local May 22, 2017 18:11 UTC