28m-year-old Ancestor Of Man Reported Found

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31530, 18 November 1967, Page 13

28m-year-old Ancestor Of Man Reported Found

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) NEW HAVEN (Connecticut), Nov. 17. The fossilised skull of a 28 million-year-old ape, regarded as a major link in the evolution of man, had been found in Egypt, it was announced yesterday.

A Yale geology professor, Professor Elwyn D. Simons, said the skull unearthed by a Yale University team in the Fayum desert, south-west of Cairo, was eight to 10 million years older than any other specimen. “It is better preserved than any fossils related to man that are older than 300,000 years,” he said. The skull belonged to a

small animal “about the size of an organ-grinder’s monkey” of a species near the base of the family tree leading to the later great apes and man.

“It represents a major stage in the documentation of the forerunners of man,” Professor Simons told the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontologists. Study of the skull, which was shipped to Yale and delicately removed from its encasing rock, tended to strengthen the belief that early ancestors of man were ape-like, and not squirrel-like mammals related to the lemur, he said. Yale teams led by Professor Simons have made six expeditions since 1961 to the Fayum desert. The frontal bone of the skull, exposed by erosion, was discovered almost 300

feet below the surface, embedded in rock. Professor Simons said the skull was superficially reminiscent of early lemurs, but possessed most of the distinct features of higher primates.

Development of the eye socket was advanced, but not as completely closed as in modern apes and men. The brain case, relative to face size, was smaller than that of any subsequent ape. The animal apparently had no external ears. The skeleton of a dinosaur 60 to 65 feet long and more than 150 million years old had been delivered to the Moscow Palaeontology Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Tass news agency reported. Tass said the skeleton was found in the Kirghizian mountains near the town of TashKumyr. It described the find as of world-wide significance.