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Prehistoric ape from Germany was a pioneer of two-legged walking
Fossils unearthed in southern Germany of a remarkable ape that lived about 11.6 million years ago may dramatically alter the understanding of the evolutionary origins of a fundamental human trait - walking upright on two legs.
Scientists on Wednesday said the ape, called Danuvius guggenmosi, combined attributes of humans - straight lower limbs adapted for bipedalism - with those of apes - long arms able to stretch out to grasp tree branches. That indicates Danuvius was able to walk upright on two legs and also use all four limbs while clambering through trees.
It is the oldest-known example of upright walking in apes.
The discovery suggests that bipedalism originated in a common ancestor of humans and the great apes - a group that includes chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans - that inhabited Europe rather than an ancestor from Africa, the continent where our species Homo sapiens first appeared roughly 300,000 years ago, the researchers said.
Until now, the oldest fossil evidence of bipedalism in humankind’s evolutionary tree dated to about 6 million years ago: fossils from Kenya of an extinct member of the human lineage called Orrorin tugenensis as well as footprints on the Mediterranean island of Crete. If Danuvius turns out to be ancestral to humans, that would mean that some of its descendants at some point made their way to Africa.
“Danuvius changes the why, when and where of evolution of bipedality dramatically,” said paleoanthropologist Madelaine Böhme of the University of Tübingen in Germany, who led the research published in the journal Nature.
The discovery of Danuvius may shatter the prevailing notion of how bipedalism evolved: that perhaps 6 million years ago in East Africa a chimpanzee-like ancestor started to walk on two legs after environmental changes created open landscapes and savannahs where forests once dominated.
“This paradigm is now declining - or, in other words, is shown by us to be wrong,” Böhme said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @11:07PM (4 children)
Some bullshit like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:41AM (3 children)
Gehenvergnügen, not to be confused with fahrvergnügen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:59AM (1 child)
"fahrvergnügen" - german word for propelling forward by farting backward.
AKA - conservation of momentum.
I despise krauts.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:04AM
I see, you enjoy Trollvergnügen.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:00AM
That would be Gehvergnügen.
fahren → Fahrvergnügen.
gehen → Gehvergnügen.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @11:08PM (4 children)
Always have been, always will be.
No surprise that a German scientist delivered this gem... not because she's a Nazi, but because you couldn't publish this in the U.S. of S.J.W.A.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:25AM
Great White Apes? The ones from the Original Series Star Trek episode [wikipedia.org], or the ones from "The Time Machine" [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:25AM
Wait... Didn't Hitler say that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:45AM
Came to see the find willfully misrepresented by a white supremacist.
Bitter satisfaction, alas.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday November 16 2019, @04:31AM
She may not have been, but it looks like the specimen could have been an ancestor [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @11:13PM (1 child)
This must have been Trump's great great great great great great [...] great grandfather.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:23AM
Now that you mention it, he does bear a striking resemblance to Broom-Hilda. That does explain the witch-hunt thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:59AM
Our ancestors were devloping interesting characteristics and spreading around the globe long before they were remotely human? How could that be? Next they'll be telling us that we incorporated mitochondria into our cellular metabolisms before we were human!
(Score: 1) by Frosty Piss on Saturday November 16 2019, @03:46AM (1 child)
Interestingly, there are *still* prehistoric apes running around Germany.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @06:25PM
those are called "migrants" and they are being shepherded in by Jew NGOs and race traitor EU politicians.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 16 2019, @04:14AM
There are lots of examples of different species evolving similar traits in response to environmental/situational factors at different times and in different places.
We call that Convergent Evolution [wikipedia.org] (CE)
Examples:
Flying: Bats, birds, flying insects (there are examples of CE among insects, in fact)
as well as many others [wikipedia.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:25AM
So, a commie ape invented two-legged walking. Take that Elon Trump!