Word: dryopithecus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...