An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea
Summary
The Early Miocene fossil record documenting hominoid evolution has long been restricted primarily to sites in East Africa, whereas contemporaneous North African sites have only yielded remains of cercopithecoid monkeys. Here, we describe a fossil ape from North Africa, a new genus (Masripithecus) from the Early Miocene (~17 million to 18 million years) of northern Egypt, on the basis of mandibular remains. A combined molecular-morphological Bayesian tip-dating analysis positions Masripithe
Content
# An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea
*Published: 2026 Mar 26*
The Early Miocene fossil record documenting hominoid evolution has long been
restricted primarily to sites in East Africa, whereas contemporaneous North
African sites have only yielded remains of cercopithecoid monkeys. Here, we
describe a fossil ape from North Africa, a new genus (Masripithecus) from the
Early Miocene (~17 million to 18 million years) of northern Egypt, on the basis
of mandibular remains. A combined molecular-morphological Bayesian tip-dating
analysis positions Masripithecus closer to crown hominoids than coeval fossil
apes from East Africa, thereby filling a phylogenetic and biogeographic gap in
the evolution of stem hominoids. This evidence suggests that crown Hominoidea
might have originated during the Early Miocene in the underexplored northeastern
part of Afro-Arabia, rather than in eastern Africa or Eurasia.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adz4102