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Mother of All Apes May Have Been Surprisingly Small (sciencemag.org)

Posted by timothy on from the father-smelt-of-elderberries dept.

sciencehabit writes: From sturdy chimpanzees to massive gorillas to humans themselves, the living great apes are all large-bodied, weighing between 30 and 180 kilograms. So for years most researchers thought the ancestral ape must have tipped the scales as well. But the partial skeleton of an 11.6-million-year-old primitive ape may force scientists to reimagine the ancestor of all living apes and humans. With a muzzle like a gibbon but a large brain for its body size, the ancient primate has traits that link it to all apes and humans—yet it weighed only 4 kg to 5 kg, according to a report today in Science.

20 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Sure, why not by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was at a zoo in Panama and a tiny little monkey offered me some of his dirty banana. I guess I looked like him. I told him no thanks, though, he could keep it. So he finished it. The point of this story is that we're not that different from a monkey, except most humans wouldn't offer you shit

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Sure, why not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      humans have just evolved more subtle yet vastly more evil ways of throwing shit at each other. At least our primitive cousins are open about it.

  2. TFA pennedd by Ann Gibbons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The perfect name.

  3. Err yes by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    From sturdy chimpanzees to massive gorillas to humans themselves, the living great apes are all large-bodied, weighing between 30 and 180 kilograms.

    Err, yes, that's why they're called "great apes," isn't it?

    There are lesser apes as well, which are all gibbons.

    So for years most researchers thought the ancestral ape must have tipped the scales as well.

    I assume there's a bit more to the previous reasoning than that.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Err yes by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I thought gibbons were among the great apes. They are, however, considerably lighter than chimps, Google says about 5 Kg.

      Anyone who didn't consider gibbons among the descendants of proto-ape-kind wasn't doing his homework.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    2. Re:Err yes by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      So for years most researchers thought the ancestral ape must have tipped the scales as well.

      I assume there's a bit more to the previous reasoning than that.

      There is. One of the big things being that (arguably) the best known of the older "apes" is Proconsul, found mostly in localities in East Africa - exactly the region where the later apes (including hominids) have been most often found.

      This discovery however, comes from near Barcelona, near the French-Spanish (and Catalan) border(s), and is some considerable time later (we don't really know when Proconsul died out ; we're still collecting data). This strongly suggests that there was a LOT more to primate and "ape" evolution than the story unearthed so far in East Africa.

      The more we are looking for fossils, the less simple the story of primate evolution gets. which is exactly what one would expect, and shows that there is nothing in the least bit unusual about the evolution of primates. We're just like brachiopods, insects, plants and amoebae.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  4. makes sense by drewsup · · Score: 2

    Small, light and agile would have been the advantage back then, once the evolutionary niche was carved out and your species started to flourish, then the competetive size differences would start to evolve.

    1. Re:makes sense by khallow · · Score: 1

      Less agile != not agile.

  5. Re:hymenologist's lament; monkeys missing hymens by drewsup · · Score: 1

    Prolly a protective sheath for immature females? Help in keeping out bacteria and other nasties?

  6. Dah! by evanh · · Score: 1

    Here I was thinking those single-celled amoeba had a ten metre girth.

  7. who read that as... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

    "Mother of All Apps"

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:who read that as... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      You.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  8. She so small... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    A story where "ur mom " would actually be a relevant comment.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Easy now Archaeology by rmdingler · · Score: 1
    This discovery should certainly be taken into account when attempting to solve the puzzle of human evolution.

    Archaeology, like almost no other earth science study, has a tendency to flip convention on its head with a single discovery.

    To be fair, millions of year-old corroboration is difficult to obtain, but let's keep it in perspective. It seems likely there were multiple dead ends during the evolutionary pressures selecting derivatives of early humanoids.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  10. Looks very cute by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    ... And its got hair Donald Trump would die for.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  11. 180kg? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

    That's about 400lb. Quite a few humans weigh more than that.

  12. Monkey's Uncle by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    So not only am I am monkey's uncle but now i must live with being a dwarf monkey's uncle.

  13. Re:One crazy ape by HiThere · · Score: 1

    Well, it has to have been after the creation of language. Probably after the creation of pronouns.

    OTOH, IIUC most tribal groups DON'T believe in an all-powerful being. Just a mighty ancestor, whose deeds become increasingly magnified as he retreats further into the past. Maui had a mother, e.g., and did what she told him to...usually.

    So I'd guess that the "all powerful being" doesn't much predate Ikhnaton. And that it was usually a personification of the sun. (Note that early Judaic writings say things like "Thou shalt have no other gods before me.", not "There is no god but me."

    OTOH, the idea of a mightier than plausible entity probably dates back far before language. I've heard this called the "Big Baboon" theory of religion. It mixes religion and politics and claims that gods evolved out of submission to the Alpha Ape of the pack. This is plausible, but is a far cry from omnipotence, which even Zeus and Jupiter didn't have claimed for them.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  14. Evolution at work by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Nothing surprising here. First we have creatures not very efficient at gathering food, which are bound to remain small because of the lack of resource

    Then there is a breakthrough: a bigger brain, which allows more efficient food gathering, resulting in bigger bodies.

  15. I hate every ape I see... by zawarski · · Score: 1

    ...from chimpan-a to chimpanzee.