An incredible discovery in China could forever change how we understand the history of human evolution.
A “mother lode” of fossils in China first discovered in the 1990s of a small monkey-like creature that was 10 million years older than apes in Africa suggests that our ape ancestors may have rafted across the sea to Africa many eons ago, according to a University of Kansas statement.
Previously, scientists had thought that primates had evolved in Africa over millions of years ago into man before starting to cross continents and oceans to our present locations. But this discovery seems to indicate that a species of monkey evolved in Asia and then sailed across the sea to Africa, and then went extinct in Asia due to climate change. Scientists think they may have rafted across on trees, as monkeys aren’t good swimmers.
The discovery would rewrite our understanding of how apes evolved into humans and then subsequently spread across the world.
“At the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, because of the rearrangement of Earth’s major tectonic plates, you had a rapid drop in temperature and humidity,” K. Christopher Beard, senior curator at the University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute and co-author of the report, said in the statement. “Primates like it warm and wet, so they faced hard times around the world — to the extent that they went extinct in North America and Europe. Of course, primates somehow survived in Africa and Southern Asia, because we’re still around to talk about it.”