According to an article published in New Scientist, new archaeological evidence suggests that the human species is likely to have had its origins in Greece not in Africa as was commonly thought until now.
The claim comes from a study of fossils discovered in Greece and Bulgaria by Nikolai Spassov and his team from the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Spassov discovered a jawbone that was more than 7 million years old, which predates the Sahelanthropus hominin found in Africa.
The jawbone is believed to belong to an ape called Graecopithecus that roamed Eastern Europe long after the other apes had vanished from the continent.
CT-scanning of the jawbone revealed the roots of the premolars fused in a way that is extremely rare in chimps and only occurs regularly to hominins, that is, pre-humans and humans.
In addition to the fusion of the premolars, the small canines on the jawbone also compounded the claim that it was a hominin.
TORNOS
in Greece