The primate family tree might've just gotten a bit bigger.
Researchers discovered a 13-million-year-old skull believed to be of an infant ape from what's now Kenya. And it's not just older than other ape specimens in the fossil record. It belongs to a completely new species of hominoid similar to present-day gibbons.
Scholars think during the Miocene period some 5 million to 23 million years ago, primates split into at least 40 different species. But only a third of those species have been identified from cranial remains, which leaves huge gaps in the family tree.
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And until now, some of the best fossil evidence we had of some 10 million years of primate evolution were jaw fragments. But this skull was buried — maybe in an ash fall from a nearby volcano — and preserved for millenia.
Now, it could give palaeontologists a pristine window into the evolution of early ape traits. Researchers don't think this animal was a direct human ancestor, but they say it could offer clues to how and when the earliest hominoids started developing more unique skills — like walking upright.
