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"Human"-Faced Missing Link Found in Spain?
Move over Ida—you're last month's news. There's a new (purported) "missing link" in town.
An 11.9-million-year-old fossil ape species with an unusually flat, "surprisingly human" face has been found in Spain. The discovery suggests humans' ape ancestors split from primitive apes in Europe, not Africa—the so-called cradle of humanity—a new study says.
The species, Anoiapithecus brevirostris, may also represent the last known common ancestor of humans and living great apes—including orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees—researchers say.
"With this fossil, our opinion is that the origin of our family very probably took place in the Mediterranean region," said study leader Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona.
"Surprisingly Human"
National Geographic I wish they wouldn’t use the term 'missing link', it makes a lot of people think in terms of a 'chain' where one of the links is missing and it gives the anti-evolution fundies a line of attack ... "where's the missing links, huh huh?", there really aren’t any. Or, they would be so EXTREEMLY rare when you think of all the veriety of species Throughout earths history. It's best to think of evolution of species in terms of a tree, where the tree branches off along the trunk, and the branches branch off, and then the branches of the branches branch off etc..In a humongous tree of life, with billions of branches and the original life form at it's base. These early primates for example are related to modern humans somehow, there's no doubt about it, all living things are related, but without more fossils, we cant say whether or not this species might have branched off from our common ancestors, and developed, then branched off again and become extinct, or if it was something that was in a direct line of decent. There aren’t enough fossils to say for sure where these early primates fit into our evolutionary ancestral tree. my 2 cents.