Earliest Baboon Discovered May Shed Light on Evolution

Researchers have discovered the oldest baboon to date. They've uncovered a skull that dates back more than 2 million years ago at Malapa, which is the same site where the new early hominin species, Australopithecus sediba, were discovered in 2010.

"Baboons are known to have co-existed with hominins at several fossil localities in East Africa and South Africa and they are sometimes even used as comparative models in human evolution," said Christopher Gilbert, lead author of the new study, in a news release.

The skull actually confirms earlier suggestions that the fossil baboon species to which it belongs, Papio angusticeps, was closely related to modern baboons and quite possibly the earliest known members of the modern baboon species Papio hamadryas.

Modern baboons are typically divided into a number of populations recognized as either species or subspecies spread all throughout sub-Saharan Africa and into the Arabian Peninsula. Despite their evolutionary success, modern baboon origins in the fossil record are not well-understood or agreed upon.

"According to molecular clock studies, baboons are estimated to have diverged from their closest relatives by ~1.8 to 2.2 million years ago; however, until now, most fossil specimens known within this time range have been either too fragmentary to be definitive or too primitive to be confirmed as members of the living species Papio hamadryas," said Gilbert. "The specimen from Malapa and our current analyses help to confirm the suggestion of previous researchers that P. angusticeps may, in fact, be an early population of P. hamadryas."

The findings reveal a bit more about baboon evolution. More specifically, they show how this evolution cradle fostered apes during this early time.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.

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