Were our earliest hominid ancestors European?

New Scientist ^ | Monday, June 1, 2009 | Bob Holmes

[SunkenCiv]

Millions of years before early humans evolved in Africa, their ancestors may have lived in Europe, a 12-million-year-old fossil hominid from Spain suggests.

The fossil, named Anoiapithecus brevirostris by Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues, dates from a period of human evolution for which the record is very thin. While only the animal's face, jaw and teeth survive, their shape places it within the African hominid lineage that gave rise to gorillas, chimps and humans. However, it also has features of a related group called kenyapithecins.

Moyà-Solà says that A. brevirostris and some similar-looking kenyapithecins lived in Europe shortly after the afrohominid and kenyapithecin lineages split, and so that the divergence itself may have happened there. If he is right, our hominid ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans evolved.

This "into Africa" scenario is likely to be controversial. Critics argue that discoveries like Moyà-Solà's are more likely to reflect the quality of the fossil records in Africa and Europe than offer clues to the actual origins of hominids.

Jay Kelley, a palaeobiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, points out that the fossil record from the time in question is much better in Europe than in Africa. "If you've got a record on one continent but not the other, naturally you're going to see origins of the group from the continent where you've got the record," he says.

[colorado tanker]

Critics argue that discoveries like Moyà-Solà's are more likely to reflect the quality of the fossil records in Africa and Europe than offer clues to the actual origins of hominids.

There sure isn't much to work with in trying to draw conclusions. But it's fun to speculate, isn't it?

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

Linguistic diversity in Africa isn't the greatest of any continent I don't think, but there are some weird isolates. Regardless, either way instead points to repeated ingress from multiregionally evolved populations from outside Africa. :')

[ZULU]

I KNOW I read that there are more language families in Africa than anywhere else.

And your theory is not what linguists state. Think about it. If there are a LOT of langauge groups in place A and only a few in place B, where is most of the langauge generation going on?

Hominds are primates and there are very few primates which live in cold areas.

[Cronos]

If there were evolved populations outside Africa, wouldn’t that mean there were different species? If yes, then the offspring either wouldn’t be born or would be sterile (like mules).

[SunkenCiv]

No, because they’d have some kind of common ancestry, separated by geography and regional independent adaptation / mutation / breeding / development.

[Cronos]

True, but even horses and donkeys have a common ancestor, yet years of evolving in isolation made them separate species or sub-species that can’t produce fertile offspring. Wouldn’t that be the same if people evolved separately on different continents?

[BroJoeK]

"True, but even horses and donkeys have a common ancestor, yet years of evolving in isolation made them separate species or sub-species that can’t produce fertile offspring. Wouldn’t that be the same if people evolved separately on different continents?"

Depends. Depends on how long they were separated. Horses and donkeys split off around 5 million years ago.

Where exactly is the line dividing subspecies which can still interbreed from those which cannot?

Pure speculation -- could humans and Neanderthals successfully interbreed? Now we are talking hundreds of thousands instead of millions of years. Some say "yes," some say "no." No one has yet volunteered to find out. ;-)

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo.

also, related:

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[allmendream]

Sterility is not the inevitable consequence of inter-species breeding.

The problems for a hybrid come when trying to shuffle together mom and dad's DNA to impart to a potential offspring; if they don't match up well (because mom was a tiger and dad was a lion) it can lead to semi sterility; but not always. Tiger-lion hybrids are fertile and can and have given birth.

Coyotes and wolves can also successfully interbreed, as well as many other closely related species.

So it would be quite possible for two subspecies of homo sapiens to develop separately for a few thousand years, then mix genes together if and when they come back into reproductive contact with each other.