For decades, common scientific knowledge has held that homo sapiens—human beings as we know them today—evolved in Africa some 200,000 years ago. But a new fossil discovery in another part of the world seemingly flips that notion on its head.
Scientists [have now] identified a new fossil ape, which they named Anadoluvius turkae, at an 8.7 million-year-old site near Çankırı in northern Turkey. The findings were first published in the Nature Communications Biology journal as research into this possible ancestor is ongoing.
The research, study co-author David Begun said, “suggest[s] that hominins not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests.”
