“The most complete extinct-ape skull ever found reveals what the last common ancestor of all living apes and humans might have looked like, according to a new study.
The 13-million-year-old infant skull, which its discoverers nicknamed “Alesi,” was unearthed in Kenya in 2014. It likely belonged to a fruit-eating, slow-climbing primate that resembled a baby gibbon… The size of the skull and teeth do suggest that if Alesi had reached adulthood, it would have weighed about 24.9 lbs. (11.3 kilograms) at maturity. The researchers also noted that Alesi’s 6.16-cubic-inch (101 cubic centimeters) brain was about as big as that of a modern lemur of the same size.
The small snout of the skull would have made Alesi look like a baby gibbon.” (Choi 2017)
Evidently, our common ancestor with the chimp and the great apes wasn’t a ferocious-looking King Kong but was a small, arboreal animal the size of a modern lemur or small gibbon. Of course, evolution isn’t static but fluid, and the next great discovery could alter our understanding. This applies to our hominin lineage as well. “Hominin: All species, living or extinct, on the ‘human’ side of the evolutionary tree after our common ancestor with chimpanzees divided into the two lineages that would produce modern humans and modern chimpanzees.” (Coyne, 2009)
That said, in 2002 the French paleontologist Michel Brunet and team unearthed skull fragments in the Sahel region of Chad in Central Africa. From the July 2012 article in the Smithsonian Magazine about the discovery:
“Although very primitive, the skull, jaw, and teeth displayed some hominid-like traits. For instance, the species had a relatively flat face instead of a protruding muzzle like a chimp. And the tip of the canine tooth was worn down, as it is in humans. This suggested Sahelanthropus lacked a “honing” complex in which the back side of the upper canine sharpens itself against the lower first premolar (what your dentist might call a bicuspid). This appears to be a trait that hominids lost after they split from the chimpanzee lineage. In addition, Sahelanthropus’ foramen magnum—the hole at the base of the skull that the spinal cord runs through—was situated further forward than a chimp’s, implying Sahelanthropus had an erect posture and therefore walked upright on two legs. In 2005, the team announced additional jaw and teeth discoveries from Djurab, as well as a virtual reconstruction of the skull that corrected the distortion. These new pieces of evidence supported the original find, the researchers said.” (Wayman 2012) From the same article in the Smithsonian Magazine, here is a reconstruction of what Sahelanthropus may have looked like.
This isn’t exactly the perfect specimen of Adam or Eve for which our inflated sense of grandeur may have wished. Sadly, we are not the centerpiece of God’s creation. Does this look like a creature who was given Divine Dominion over all other creatures, a being who would justify our exalted position as in such well-worn phrases as ‘man and nature’ or ‘man versus nature’?
No. Our species evolved in the same manner as all
other creatures. Our earliest ancestor
after hominins split from chimpanzees about 7 million years ago is clearly a
primitive ape with human characteristics who lived in a forest near a long-vanished
lake. (to be continued in next post)