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Humans

Did apes first walk upright on two legs in Europe, not Africa?

By Michael Marshall

6 November 2019

The 21 bones discovered from an adult male Danuvius guggenmosi

Christoph Jäckle

THE discovery of 11.6-million-year-old fossils in Europe suggests that the first apes to walk upright may have evolved there, not Africa. “These findings may revolutionise our view on human evolution,” says Madelaine Böhme at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Böhme and her colleagues discovered the fossils in a clay pit in Bavaria in southern Germany. They found 37 bones belonging to four individuals: an adult male, two adult females and a juvenile. They named the new species Danuvius guggenmosi. It was a small…

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