An article published in the journal “Communications Biology” reports the assignment of fossils discovered in Anatolia in 2015 to a new species and a new genus of primitive hominins which was named Anadoluvius turkae. A team of researchers examined these fossils that form a partial skull discovered at the Çorakyerler site dating back to about 8.7 million years ago, in the Miocene period, concluding that it’s an ancestor of humans and great apes. This indicates that hominins evolved in Europe diversifying across the continent for a few million years before migrating to Africa, where the various hominin species already known evolved.
The image (Courtesy Sevim-Erol et al. All rights reserved) shows various views of the partial skull of Anadoluvius turkae.
Discussions regarding the origins of hominins have been going on for a long time due to the existence of fossils discovered in both Europe and Africa. These are often partial skeletons that make it difficult to understand the relations between the species of the same continent and even more between the European and African species.
In the case of European fossils, fossils assigned to the genera Ouranopithecus for fossils discovered in today’s Turkey and Graecopithecus for those discovered in today’s Bulgaria were found in the past decades. Various discussions concern the position of these genera in the primate family tree given that some could be considered hominins but others are generally included in larger groups such as hominids.
In 2007, some fossils discovered at the Çorakyerler site were assigned to a species that was named Ouranopithecus turkae. However, this new study including the partial skull discovered in 2015 and a re-examination of previously known fossils offers a different picture by identifying a new genus of hominins.
Although only the skull is available, the researchers inferred other physical characteristics of Anadoluvius turkae based on similarities to other species for which more complete skeletons are available. According to them, these species were similar in size to a large male chimpanzee. The jaws and teeth suggest that this species lived in an environment where it needed to chew hard food such as roots.
By analyzing this skull and other fossils already known, the researchers concluded that hominins evolved and diversified in Europe and then migrated to Africa, probably following climate change that led to a decrease in the forests in which they lived. These are different conclusions from some previous studies that suggest a scenario in which different branches of primates migrated to Europe from Africa and then became extinct while other branches evolved into hominins in Africa.
The question is complex and inevitably leads to continuous discussions, also because each new fossil find can offer significant information that leads to new conclusions regarding the history of hominins. If the conclusions of this study are correct, they confirm that human history has been made up of migrations for some million years.
