A new Miocene ape and locomotion in the ancestor of great apes and humans

Madelaine Böhme (), Nikolai Spassov, Jochen Fuss, Adrian Tröscher, Andrew S. Deane, Jérôme Prieto, Uwe Kirscher, Thomas Lechner and David R. Begun
Additional contact information
Madelaine Böhme: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Nikolai Spassov: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Jochen Fuss: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Adrian Tröscher: Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment
Andrew S. Deane: University of Indianapolis
Jérôme Prieto: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Uwe Kirscher: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Thomas Lechner: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
David R. Begun: University of Toronto

Nature, 2019, vol. 575, issue 7783, 489-493

Abstract: Abstract Many ideas have been proposed to explain the origin of bipedalism in hominins and suspension in great apes (hominids); however, fossil evidence has been lacking. It has been suggested that bipedalism in hominins evolved from an ancestor that was a palmigrade quadruped (which would have moved similarly to living monkeys), or from a more suspensory quadruped (most similar to extant chimpanzees)1. Here we describe the fossil ape Danuvius guggenmosi (from the Allgäu region of Bavaria) for which complete limb bones are preserved, which provides evidence of a newly identified form of positional behaviour—extended limb clambering. The 11.62-million-year-old Danuvius is a great ape that is dentally most similar to Dryopithecus and other European late Miocene apes. With a broad thorax, long lumbar spine and extended hips and knees, as in bipeds, and elongated and fully extended forelimbs, as in all apes (hominoids), Danuvius combines the adaptations of bipeds and suspensory apes, and provides a model for the common ancestor of great apes and humans.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1731-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:575:y:2019:i:7783:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1731-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1731-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().