Graecopithecus
Graecopithecus is an extinct hominid that lived in southeast Europe during the late Miocene around 7.2 million years ago. Originally identified by a single lower jaw bone bearing a molar tooth found in Pyrgos Vasilissis, Athens, Greece, in 1944,[1] other tooth specimens were discovered from Azmaka quarry in Bulgaria in 2012.[2] With only little and badly preserved materials to reveal its nature, it is considered as "the most poorly known European Miocene hominoids."[3] The creature was popularly nicknamed 'El Graeco' by scientists.[4]
In 2017, an international team of palaeontologists led by Madelaine Böhme of the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Germany, published a detailed analysis of the teeth and age of the specimens, and came to the conclusion that it could be the oldest hominin, meaning that it could the oldest direct ancestors of humans after splitting from that of the chimpanzees.[5] Their simultaneous study also claimed that contrary to the generally accepted evidences of the African origin of the hominin lineage, the ancestors of humans originated from the main ape ancestry in the Mediterranean region (before migrating into Africa where they evolved into the ancestors of Homo species).[6][4] They named the origin of human theory as the "North Side Story."[7]
These claims have been disputed by other scientists.[8] Rick Potts and Bernard Wood argued that the evidence is too flimsy to even say it is a hominin.[7] Tim D. White commented that the claim was only to support a biased argument that Africa is not the birthplace of humans; while Sergio Almécija stated that single characters such as teeth cannot tell the claimed evolutionary details.[8] Systematic re-analysis by palaeontologists from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2017 did not find enough evidence to support the species as hominin or as the oldest ancestor of human lineage separating from the apes.[9]
The original Graecopithecus specimen was a single mandible found in southern Greece in 1944, "reportedly unearthed as the occupying German forces were building a wartime bunker".[8] The original finder, German paleontologist Bruno von Freyberg initially believed that it belonged to an extinct Old World monkey Mesopithecus, as he reported in 1951.[10][11] However, Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald realised that it was the tooth of an ape family and erected the scientific name Graecopithecus freybergi in 1972, after the discoverer.[1]
The mandible (lower jaw) of Graecopithecus with a third molar that is very worn, the root of a second molar, and a fragment of a premolar is from a site called Pyrgos Vassilissis, northwest of Athens,[12][13] and is dated from the late Miocene around 7.2 million years old.[5] Excavation of the site is not possible (as of 1986) due to the owner having built a swimming pool on the location.[13]
The thick enamel and large molars are the features that convinced von Koenigswald that the specimen belonged to a hominid species.[14] X-ray microtomography and 3-dimentional reconstruction in 2017 revealed that it belonged to an adult individual and possibly a male. The partial fusion of the fourth premolar (P4) roots is an additional evidence that it is of a hominid, and the thick enamel resembles those of the human lineage (hominins).[5]
