18 million-year-old fossils of ape found in Africa, but in an unexpected place

The discovery of an enigmatic ape's 18 million year-old fossils in Egypt hints that the ancestors of all living apes, a group that includes humans, may have originated in northeast Africa or Arabia, a new study finds.

Scientists have long assumed that modern apes originated in East Africa, but the newfound fossils, which belong to a new genus and species, suggest they emerged farther north.

"Discovering a fossil ape in this region is both significant and somewhat surprising," study first author Shorouq Al-Ashqar, a paleontologist at Mansoura University in Egypt, told Live Science in an email. "But it also highlights how incomplete our picture has been."

Previous research has established that apes first appeared at least 25 million years ago. They soon flourished, diversifying into dozens of species and spreading across Africa, Europe and Asia.

But relatively few of these ancient apes were on the evolutionary line leading to modern apes ‪—‬ a group that includes humans and other great apes, along with gibbons and siamangs. Moreover, the apes that were on our ancestral line seem to have been confined largely to East Africa. As such, this region has long appeared to be a good place to search for the origins of modern apes.

However, after finding the fossilized remains of an ape that lived in what is now northern Egypt between 17 million and 18 million years ago, Al-Ashqar and her colleagues challenge this idea in a study published March 26 in the journal Science.

The remains, discovered in 2023 and 2024, are very incomplete ‪—‬ just a few fragments of lower jawbone and some worn teeth. But Al-Ashqar and her colleagues established that the remains didn't belong to any known ape species. The researchers have assigned the fossils to a new genus and species named Masripithecus moghraensis; the genus name translates to "Egypt monkey or trickster" in Arabic and Greek, while the species name refers to "Wadi Moghra," where it was found.

The find is important, said Sergio Almécija, a biological anthropologist at the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain who was not involved in the study. "Any new fossil ape discovery is precious because of their scarcity, especially when it comes from a region where their presence has previously gone unnoticed," he told Live Science in an email.

To determine where M. moghraensis fits in the ape evolutionary tree, Al-Ashqar and her colleagues looked at the age and anatomy of a range of ape fossils, as well as evolutionary information in the DNA of living apes.

The analysis placed M. moghraensis on the ancestral line of living apes, just before the split between the great-ape group and the gibbon-siamang, or "lesser ape," group. This implies that M. moghraensis was very closely related to the last common ancestor of all living apes. That, in turn, suggests this common ancestor must have lived in roughly the same place as M. moghraensis.

"The highest odds are [that it lived] in the northern part of the Afro-Arabian landmass," study co-author Erik Seiffert, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email.

However, not everyone agrees with this interpretation. Almécija describes it as "a bit far-fetched." He would like to see far more complete fossils of M. moghraensis before any attempt to update mainstream scientific ideas about the last common ancestor of living apes.

But Al-Ashqar said the jaw and teeth are among the most useful skeletal parts for working out the evolutionary history of apes. "In mammalian palaeontology, dental anatomy is a cornerstone for interpreting diet and evolutionary history," she said.

Moreover, the idea that modern apes originated in North Africa and Arabia about 17 million years ago fits to some extent with known evidence, according to David Alba, a paleontologist at the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology who wasn't involved in the analysis.

For instance, today's nonhuman great apes are found in Africa and Southeast Asia, and fossils show great apes once lived in West Asia, too. Given this information, and the fact that today's lesser apes are found in South and Southeast Asia, "modern hominoids [apes] must have gone through northeastern Afro-Arabia," Alba told Live Science in an email, although this doesn't necessarily mean they originated there.

The exact evolutionary significance of M. moghraensis remains unclear, but its discovery hints that there are more ape fossils yet to be found in and around Egypt. "Further work there could significantly refine our understanding of early ape evolution," Al-Ashqar said.

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