Dryopithecus in the European forests
The first fossil ape ever described lives in subtropical Europe and may sit near the African ape root.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3.5 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Dryopithecus was named in 1856 from a French jaw, three years before On the Origin of Species, and it remains central to arguments about great ape origins. It is a chimpanzee-sized fruit-eater with thin tooth enamel, living in the warm forests that then covered Europe. Some analyses place it close to the ancestry of African apes and humans, implying that the lineage leading to us evolved in Europe and returned to Africa — a possibility that remains genuinely open.