Previous Research
Previous efforts to find fossils of great ape ancestors in Africa from between 12 and 8 million years ago had been largely unsuccessful. This absence led some to hypothesize that apes were absent from Africa during this time, and had recolonized Africa from areas in Asia where fossils from this time period are more plentiful. Molecular estimates that humans and gorillas diverged after 8 million years ago were consistent with this idea, in which an adaptive radiation might have occurred after a single species entered Africa and began to adapt to different environments.
Current fossils and research prior to this finding indicated that the evolutionary split between gorillas and humans occurred around 8 million years ago. The new fossils indicate that the split may have happened as long as 10.5 million years ago. It is thought that humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees as recently as 4 to 7 million years ago.
Read more about this topic: Chororapithecus Abyssinicus
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