Word: dryopithecus
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When Simons began unearthing scattered Aegyptopithecus fragments in the 1960s, he could only speculate about the primate's place in the evolutionary past. From the latest group of fossils, he is convinced that it was the immediate forebear of Dryopithecus, a more advanced primate that first appeared in Africa 8 million years later; that was not long before the crucial split in the evolutionary tree that produced one branch leading to the apes, another to man. Simons is so sure of Aegyptopithecus' place in the evolutionary scheme that he has taken to calling the beast "the dawn...
Where did the primate line that led to man really originate? Lately most of the evidence has pointed to Africa, where scientists have found the bones of a knuckle-walking ape called Dryopithecus, a creature that lived some 20 million years ago and is generally believed to have given rise to both apes and man. This ape's own ancestors seem likely to have lived in Africa as well. As Exhibit A, Duke University Anthropologist Elwyn Simons offered fossils, found near Cairo, of a tree-dwelling primate 30 million years old; Simons christened the creature Aegyptopithecus. Last week, however...
...point did primate evolution begin taking one route that led to the great apes of Africa, another to man? Paleontologists generally believe, on the basis of bits and pieces of fossils millions of years old, that the common ancestor may have been the small, long extinct apelike animal named Dryopithecus (from the Greek for "oak" and "ape"). They also speculate that the evolutionary parting of the ways that resulted in Homo sapiens occurred some 15 million years...
While these ancient footprints shed fresh light on our nearer ancestors, Anthropologist Elwyn Simons, director of Duke University's primate center, revealed new findings on more distant kin. Most scientists agree that both man and ape descended from a common ancestor, a beast called Dryopithecus (meaning tree ape), which appeared in Africa some 20 million years ago. But who, or what, preceded it? As far back as 1963, Simons, then at Yale, began uncovering in the wind-scoured Fayum desert region, southwest of Cairo, bones of a likely candidate: a small, fox-sized, tree-inhabiting primate, which he dubbed Aegyptopithecus...
...where geological and climatic conditions are similar to those in the Afar region where Lucy was found. Pilbeam will soon go back to Pakistan in search of "new surprises." Simons is heading for Egypt in search of fossils that could enable him to trace man's roots back beyond Dryopithecus...