Tailor-made : In the News

Rare fossil found in Kenya: 13-11-2007

A ten million-year-old jawbone has been unearthed in Kenya and could be the key to changing theories about evolution.

Researchers from the Primate Research Institute of the Kyoto University in Japan found the fossilised jaw as well as 11 teeth in volcanic deposits in the Nakali region of Kenya on the edge of the Rift Valley.

The fossil is evidence that ape ancestors evolved in Africa, contradicting an earlier theory that contemporary African apes were re-introduced from Europe or Asia, the researchers wrote in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A rarity to find, the last time a hominoid fossil from this period was found in Kenya was a quarter of a century ago.

"It is likely that these early Late Miocene African hominoids are more or less close to the last common ancestor of the African great apes and humans," the authors wrote in their report and the new species of ape has been named as Nakalipithecus nakayamai.

This news comes after Japanese and Ethiopian palaeontologists announced in August that they had discovered ten-million-year-old teeth fossils in Ethiopia's Afar region and named the new species Chororapithecus abyssinicus.