>>>Scientists have unearthed remains of a primate that could have been ancestral not only to humans but to all great apes, including chimps and gorillas.
The partial skeleton of this 13-million-year-old "missing link" was found by palaeontologists working at a dig site near Barcelona in Spain. <<<
>>>Great apes are thought - on the basis of genetic and other evidence - to have separated from another primate group known as the lesser apes some time between 11 and 16 million years ago (The lesser apes include gibbons and siamang).
It is fascinating, therefore, for a specimen like Pierolapithecus to turn up right in this window. <<<
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4014351.stm