Early apes may not have evolved in East Africa

Modern apes may have actually evolved in North Africa or the Middle East Skip to content Subscribe today Every print subscription comes with full digital access Subscribe Now Menu All Topics Health Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology View All Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes View All Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment View All Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics View All Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology View All Magazine Menu All Stories Multimedia Reviews Puzzles Collections Educator Portal Century of Science Unsung characters Coronavirus Outbreak Newsletters Investors Lab About SN Explores Our Store SIGN IN Donate Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 SIGN IN Search Open search Close search Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 All Topics Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology Tech Computing Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Math Science & Society All Topics Health Humans Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Recent posts in Humans Paleontology Early apes may not have evolved in East Africa By Jake BuehlerMarch 26, 2026 Science & Society Social media can be addictive, a jury finds. 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Mauricio Antón By Jake Buehler March 26, 2026 at 2:00 pm Share this:Share Share via email (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print Modern apes may have swung into existence in North Africa or the Middle East. New fossil findings — published March 26 in Science — unveil Masripithecus, a roughly 17-million-year-old early ape that lived in what is now Egypt. The discovery expands the earliest ancestry of primates like gibbons, chimpanzees and humans beyond East Africa. That’s where the vast majority of the fossil evidence for early apes came from until now, says paleontologist Shorouq Al-Ashqar at Mansoura University in Egypt.  Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. “The entire story [of early ape evolution] was told by only a small corner of the continent,” she says. Fossil monkeys from North Africa and the Middle East have been dated to this same prehistoric timing of the Early Miocene sub-epoch, up to around 20 million years ago. But no apes, says Al-Ashqar. Al-Ashqar and her colleagues were curious if there were lost fossil apes in the region. So, in 2021, they started a project looking for ape fossils at Wadi Moghra, a fossil hot spot in northern Egypt. There, in 2024, Al-Ashqar discovered something unusual underfoot.  “I found a piece of [lower jaw] with a wisdom tooth,” she says. “I immediately realized that it was an ape.” Apes’ teeth differ from those of monkeys, Al-Ashqar says. They’re quite flat, comparatively. The second and third molars are also of similar size, unlike in monkeys. When the researchers sent images of the jaw pieces they found to a colleague in California, he was just as excited by the discovery, says Al-Ashqar. The team compared the jaw to those of known fossil species, and determined it belonged to a new genus and species of ape that lived 17 to 18 million years ago and named it Masripithecus moghraensis (Egyptian ape from Moghra).  In 2024, Shorouq Al-Ashqar discovered a fossilized jaw fragment and molar (shown) of the previously undiscovered Masripithecus ape at a fossil site in northern Egypt. Hesham Sallam “Anytime anybody has a new ape fossil it’s exciting,” says paleontologist Susanne Cote of the University of Calgary in Canada, who wasn’t involved with the study. Moghra is a fossil locality that’s been known for a century, she says, yet these primates are apparently rare enough in the fossil record that it’s taken this long for evidence to turn up. Based on the thickness of its tooth enamel, says Al-Ashqar, Masripithecus probably had a mixed diet of fruits, nuts and seeds. These would have been plentiful in the subtropical and tropical forests that covered Egypt when it lived.  The team combined genetic data from modern apes with information on physical characteristics of living and extinct ape species to generate an ape family tree. Apes are united by a relatively large body size compared to monkeys, and lack the tails that most monkeys possess. Masripithecus was very closely related to the last common ancestor of modern apes, such as gorillas and orangutans. This raises the possibility that apes evolved in the north of the continent. Sponsor Message The team used a statistical analysis to reconstruct the pr