Into Africa? Fossils Suggest Earliest Anthropoids Colonized
Africa More here.ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2010) — A new discovery
described by a team of international scientists, including
Carnegie Museum of Natural History paleontologist Christopher
Beard, suggests that anthropoids -- the primate group that
includes humans, apes, and monkeys -- "colonized" Africa, rather
than originally evolving in Africa as has been widely accepted.
According to the paper published in the journal Nature, what is
exceptional about these new fossils -- discovered at the Dur At-
Talah escarpment in central Libya -- is the diversity of species
present: the site includes three distinct families of anthropoid
primates that lived in North Africa at approximately the same
time. This suggests that anthropoids underwent diversification,
through evolution, previous to the time of these newly
discovered fossils, which date to 39 million years ago. The
sudden appearance in the African fossil record of diverse
anthropoid families can be answere