An international team of researchers has unearthed a 13-million-year-old fossil of a newly discovered ape species in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur District, which is the earliest known ancestor of the modern-day gibbon.
The finding, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, fills a major void in the ape fossil record and provides important new evidence about when the ancestors of today's gibbon migrated to Asia from Africa.
The fossil, a complete lower molar, belongs to a previously unknown genus and species (Kapi ramnagarensis), and represents the first new fossil ape species discovered at the famous fossil site of Ramnagar in nearly a century.
The researchers, including those from Arizona State University in the US and Panjab University in Chandigarh, were climbing a small hill in an area where a fossil primate jaw had been found the year before.
While pausing for a short rest, the team spotted something shiny in a small pile of dirt on the ground.
"We knew immediately it was a primate tooth, but it did not look like the tooth of any of the primates previously found in the area," said Christopher C. Gilbert, from City University of New York in the US.
"From the shape and size of the molar, our initial guess was that it might be from a gibbon ancestor, but that seemed too good to be true, given that the fossil record of lesser apes is virtually nonexistent," Gilbert noted.
He explained that there are other primate species known during that time, and no gibbon fossils have previously been found anywhere near Ramnagar.
Since the fossil's discovery in 2015, years of study, analysis, and comparison were conducted to verify that the tooth belongs to a new species, as well as to accurately determine its place in the ape family tree, the researchers said.
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