As well as providing new insight into the evolution of chimps, the landmark discovery shatters the widespread belief that humans and chimps did not coexist since they diverged from a common ancestor five to eight million years ago.
The researchers found startling evidence of the cohabitation as they unearthed fossils attributed to Homo erectus or Homo rhodesiensis in the same geologic layer less than a mile away.
Since modern chimp populations are now confined to wooded west and central Africa, whereas most hominid fossils have been found in the semi-arid East African Rift Valley, it has been long speculated that ancient chimps and humans diverged from their common ancestor when hominids left the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grasslands.
"People used to believe that the origin of humans had to do with their leaving the forest and beginning to walk on two legs. Our discovery shows that the forest-savanna dichotomy used to explain the split between the chimpanzee and human lines does not add up," McBrearty, who discovered the fossils, told Discovery News.
McBrearty and Jablonski also found fossilized remains of fish, hippopotami, crocodiles, turtles, gastropods and other moisture-loving animals.
The remains would suggest that 500,000 years ago that chimps and ancient Homo inhabited a wet, wooded area surrounding a lake.
http://dsc.discovery.com/...briefs/20050829/chimpfossil.html
Personally, this is interesting because it confirms a hunch, that all those scenarios declaring man began to walk upright when the land dried up to grassy Savannahs was essentially a myth based on very little actual evidence.
But not knowing all the details of molecular dating of the theorized divergence with human/chimp ancestors, I wonder if this new discovery affects that in anyway? Anyone know here?
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