Yunnan Yuanmou discovered the earliest gibbon ancestors' fossils

A few days ago, the classic journal Journal of Human Evolution in the field of international anthropology published a paper to determine the newly discovered ape of the newly discovered apes of the apes of girams in Yuanmou County, Chuxiong and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. This discovery pushed the gibbon recorded to 7 million to 8 million years ago.

There are 20 types of gibbon familys, mainly in the Asian tropical and subtropical regions of the Central South Peninsula, including South China and Southeast Asia in my country. There are only 4 to 6 species in my country. However, such fossils are very scarce, most of which are found in caves in South China and Southeast Asia.

The research team describes in detail the Yuanmou small apes of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology, the Yuanmouman Museum, and the Kunming Animal Museum, and the incomplete left lower sides of the newly discovered. The morphological characteristics of the teeth and facial bones are very similar to the current growth of osperm, especially the coronary gibbon, but some characteristics are more primitive, indicating that it may be the ancestors of all the current growth of the aim. According to the calculation of Yuanmou's small ape's teeth, the ape of the ape of the Yuanmou is similar to the average weight of the current growth of the cubs, about 6 kg.

In a field survey, Ji Xueping, a researcher at the Institute of Kunming Animal Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered the key specimen of Yuanmou's young apes. He went to the Kunming Animal Institute of Animal Institute for comparison with the current growth of the athyt. , And conduct high -precision CT scanning in the ancient vertebra. Although Yuanmou's small ape specimen is very scarce, after a detailed analysis and comparative research, it can be confirmed that the Yuanmou small ape is the most likely direct ancestor in the late middle and new period of the osperm.

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