How did current ape species found in Africa evolve?

The fossil record of our ape ancestors in Africa is almost nonexistent for a period of about 8 or 9 million years. This long gap lasted from about 16.5 million to 7 to 9 million years ago, during the Miocene geological epoch.

Yet fossil remains in Europe and Asia show an abundance of ape species flourishing and evolving new traits during that gap period for African apes.

The unanswered question is: How did the current ape species found in Africa evolve?

One hypothesis for the missing ape fossil record in Africa is that apes originated in Africa and then migrated to Eurasia in the mid-Miocene, where they evolved the preconditions for evolving into humans. In this scenario, the better-adapted ape species that weathered the late Miocene climate change, then returned to Africa where the human lineage then evolved.

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The other hypothesis is the high-extinction ghost model, which holds that the African ape evolution followed a similar trajectory to that of hominins. The apes diversified and dispersed into new regions, but earlier lineages became extinct. This is a scenario that [University of Cambridge paleontologists Robert A. Foley and Marta Mirazón Lahr] find “more probable.” This high-extinction pattern follows what is known about the hominin fossil record from fossil finds in the last 50 years.

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