"Robert Karl Stonjek"  wrote in
news:cnu0ru$2t1l$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> Ancient ape gives clue to family origins
> Michael Hopkin
> Fossil from 13 million years ago sheds light on human split from apes.
> 
> Fossil hunters in Spain have unearthed what seems to be the most
> recent common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, orang utans and
> humans. The ape lived almost 13 million years ago, about the time that
> our different lineages are thought to have diverged.
> 
> The species has been christened Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, in
> reference to the Catalan village of Els Hostalets de Pierola, where
> the fossil was found. The specimen consists of 83 bones from an adult
> male, including parts of the skull, teeth, ribs and fingers.
> 
> The creature would have weighed about 55 kilograms, making it about
> the size of a female chimpanzee, says Salvador Moyá-Solá of the Miquel
> Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona, whose team reports
> the discovery in this week's Science1. But it would have looked more
> like a primitive gorilla, he adds.
> 
> The scarcity of the fossil record makes it difficult to say whether P.
> catalaunicus is actually the most recent common ancestor of all great
> apes living today, Moyá-Solá says. But it is likely to resemble it
> closely: analyses of the rates at which differences arise between our
> DNA and that of other apes show that our family must have begun
> diverging at about the time when P. catalaunicus was alive.
> 
> Tree scuttler
> 
> Intriguingly, the fossil shows a mixture of typical 'apelike' features
> alongside more primitive 'monkey' characteristics, the team reports.
> The creature would have been able to lift itself into a standing
> position as modern apes can, but its short fingers mean that it would
> not have been able to grip branches with enough strength to swing from
> them. 
> 
> This means that tree-swinging might have evolved several times in
> different apes, rather than being a habit from the start, the
> researchers suggest. The earliest great apes might have scuttled
> around on top of branches, much as today's monkeys do.

I recall reading elsewhere that brachiation (tree-swinging) to the extent 
it is practiced by great apes is generally thought to be a derived 
condition - the ancestral condition is clambering. So this fossil would 
seem to fit in with what is actually the current accepted wisdom (which of 
course is subject to change). 

Yours,

Bill Morse
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