近日，埃及曼苏拉大学Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar团队研究了来自非洲和欧亚人科生物地理交汇处的早中新世猿类。相关论文于2026年3月26日发表在《科学》杂志上。

长期以来，早中新世时期的人猿总科演化记录主要局限于东非地区的遗址，而同时期的北非遗址仅出土过猴科动物化石。

研究组基于下颌标本，描述了一种发现于北非的猿类化石——来自埃及北部早中新世（约1700万至1800万年前）的新属种（埃及猿属）。通过分子-形态学结合的贝叶斯末端定年分析，该化石被定位为比同时期东非猿类更接近冠群人猿总科的类群，从而填补了干群人猿总科演化中系统发育与生物地理学的空白。这一证据表明，冠群人猿总科可能起源于早中新世时期亚非大陆东北部尚未充分探索的区域，而非东非或欧亚大陆。

附：英文原文

Title: An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea

Author: Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Erik R. Seiffert, Sanaa El-Sayed, Belal S. Salem, Abdullah S. Gohar, Hossam El-Saka, Mohamed Amin, Hesham M. Sallam

Issue&Volume: 2026-03-26

Abstract: The Early Miocene fossil record documenting hominoid evolution has long been restricted primarily to sites in East Africa, whereas contemporaneous North African sites have only yielded remains of cercopithecoid monkeys. Here, we describe a fossil ape from North Africa, a new genus (Masripithecus) from the Early Miocene (~17 million to 18 million years) of northern Egypt, on the basis of mandibular remains. A combined molecular-morphological Bayesian tip-dating analysis positions Masripithecus closer to crown hominoids than coeval fossil apes from East Africa, thereby filling a phylogenetic and biogeographic gap in the evolution of stem hominoids. This evidence suggests that crown Hominoidea might have originated during the Early Miocene in the underexplored northeastern part of Afro-Arabia, rather than in eastern Africa or Eurasia.

DOI: adz4102

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz4102