Fossils discovered in Egypt may be the closest ancestor of all apes

A recently discovered species of monkey that lived around 17 million years ago suggests that the first monkeys may have evolved in North Africa, not East Africa as previously thought.

In 2023 and 2024, at the Wadi Moghra archaeological site in northern Egypt, Shorouq Al-Ashqar of Mansoura University, Egypt, and colleagues discovered teeth and jaws of two ancient apes in deposits dated to around 17 to 18 million years ago.

In total, the team found four specimens, including the front of a mandible, or jaw, as well as two molars found next to it, belonging to one individual. The other fossil is a distinct mandibular fragment, without a dental crown, from another individual.

Al-Ashqar and his colleagues believe that the animal, named Masripithecus moghraensisis the closest known ancestor of all living great apes, including humans, gorillas and chimpanzees, as well as lesser apes such as gibbons and siamangs. Monkeys are distinguished from monkeys because they do not have tails.

The first apes are all thought to have evolved in Africa, but by 16 million years ago some members of the group were living in Europe and Asia.

The surprise for researchers is that the fossils were found in North Africa rather than in the east of the continent, where the main advances in ape evolution were previously thought to have taken place.

Al-Ashqar says that the “determining factor” for classifying the creature as a hominoid was a combination of ape-like features in the mandible, particularly where the two halves of the mandible come together, called the symphysis, which bears structural similarities to those of later apes.

“The molars are also very revealing: they are low, rounded and strongly crenellated. [ridged]”, she says. “Plus, the second and third molars are almost equal in size.”

M. moghraensis It is believed to have weighed around 25 kilograms, larger than apes of that time, and a phylogenetic analysis showed that it clearly belonged to the hominoid lineage, Al-Ashqar says.

The teeth and mandible suggest M. moghraensis had a flexible diet, she said. “It probably relied primarily on fruit, but could also handle harder foods like nuts and seeds, especially with that sturdy jaw and complex molars.”

However, until its limb bones are found, it is impossible to say how it moved or whether it lived primarily in trees or on the ground.

The size of the specimens’ canines suggests that both individuals were male, says Erik Seiffert of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who was also part of the team. But they would have been about the size of a small female chimpanzee.

“For decades, paleontologists were, to some extent, compelled to find the same types of species in the early Miocene of East Africa. We now know that the story was different in North Africa,” says Seiffert.