A fossil from Egypt hints we’ve been searching for humanity’s ape ancestors in the wrong place.
Researchers say a newly uncovered fossil ape from northern Egypt is changing how scientists think about early hominoid evolution. The discovery points to northern Africa, rather than the more commonly studied regions of East Africa, as a possible birthplace for the ancestors of modern apes. “[The] findings […] confirm that paleontologists might have been looking for crown-hominoid ancestors in the wrong place,” write David Alba and Júlia Arias-Martorell in a related Perspective.
The fossil dates to roughly 17-18 million years ago and belongs to a newly identified species called Masripithecus. It is considered the closest known hominoid relative to the lineage that eventually led to all living apes, including humans. Scientists widely agree that the earliest apes (stem hominoids) first appeared in Afro-Arabia during the Oligocene Epoch more than 25 million years ago. These early apes later spread into Eurasia between about 14 and 16 million years ago during the Miocene. Still, the exact origin of modern apes, which include all living species and their last common ancestor, remains unclear due to limited and scattered fossil evidence. Much of Africa’s fossil record is uneven, with discoveries concentrated in a few areas, leaving large regions from this time period largely unexplored.
Masripithecus Discovery in Northern Egypt
In the new study, Shorouq Al-Ashqar and colleagues describe the fossil, which was found in the Wadi Moghra region of northern Egypt and dates to about 17-18 million years ago. The species, named Masripithecus moghraensis, provides new insight into ape diversity during a critical period when land connections between Afro-Arabia and Eurasia allowed animals to move between continents.
To understand where this species fits in the evolutionary tree, the researchers used a Bayesian “tip-dating” method that combines physical characteristics with fossil ages to estimate evolutionary relationships and timing. Their results indicate that Masripithecus is a stem hominoid closely related to the lineage that produced all modern apes.
A New Possible Origin for Modern Apes
Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that modern apes may have originated in northern Afro-Arabia, the Levant, or the eastern Mediterranean. This challenges long-standing assumptions and highlights how much remains to be discovered about the early evolution of apes and humans.
Reference: “An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea” by Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Erik R. Seiffert, Sanaa El-Sayed, Belal S. Salem, Abdullah S. Gohar, Hossam El-Saka, Mohamed Amin and Hesham M. Sallam, 26 March 2026, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adz4102
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2 Comments
Afro-centrists get the raw deal again.
Last I checked Egypt was still in Africa.
No evidence was given as to why our ancestors might have evolved in the Levant, just a bare assertion that is counter to all other reasoning. Why would 90% of human DNA diversity be in Africa if we evolved elsewhere?