Press Release
The Oldest Eurasian Hominoids Lived in Swabia
Molar Tooth dated at 17 Million years by researchers from
Tübingen, Helsinki, Stuttgart and Munich
Tübingen, 2011/06/22
Africa is regarded as the centre for the evolution of humans and their
precursors. Yet long before modern humans left Africa some 125
Thousand years ago, their antecedents migrated from Africa to Eurasia
many times, as is documented by fossils. How often, when and why
hominoids went “out of Africa” is still a hotly debated field of intense
research. Possibly, the first wave of emigration occurred at 17 Million
years before present, as documented by finds in the Swabian northern
Alpine foreland basin, SW of Sigmaringen. Researchers from Tübingen
successfully pinpointed the age of a molar tooth at 17 – 17.1 Ma,
together with colleagues from Helsinki, Munich and Stuttgart. It is thus
the oldest known Eurasian hominoid found to date. The results are now
published in the Journal of Human Evolution. The owner of the tooth
once inhabited a lakeside landscape with subtropical vegetation in a
warm-humid climatic zone. Today, there is an abandoned quarry at the
locality known among palaeontologists for its fossiliferous layers.
Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Center for Human
Evolution and Palaeoecology (HEP) at the Tübingen University
combined different methods of dating of the rocks in which the molar
tooth was found. Housed at the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural
History, the find itself dates to June 24th, 1973. It was discovered by the
founder and then-director of the Geological-Palaeontological Institute in
Mainz, Prof. Dr. Heinz Tobien, in the “Talsberg” quarry in Engelswies,
Inzigkofen. Only in 2001 was the molar taken under scrutiny and
determined as a hominoid fossil, albeit with some insecurity regarding its
age.
The dating of fossils usually requires a combination of methods. For
relative dating, rapid evolutionary progress of fauna accompanying the
find can be taken into account, as for example fossil teeth of the rodent
Megacricetodon bavaricus. The researchers in Böhme's group also
utilized the fact that in the past, Earth's magnetic poles displayed
inversions at regular intervals. The magnetic polarity can be recorded in
sediments, which can then be dated by the methods of
magnetostratigraphy.
Madelaine Böhme and colleagues completed the first
magnetostratigraphic calibration of the Engelswies locality. Absolute age
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determination was achieved by referencing the data to the
acknowledged “Astronomical Tuned Neogene Time Scale” (ATNTS04).
The researchers ascertained inverse polarity of the Earth's magnetic
field for the time during the sedimentation of a 5m thick layer above and
below the bed in which the hominoid molar tooth was found. Thus, the
bed can be dated with relative precision at 17 to 17.1 Ma.
Madelaine Böhme, who also heads the lab of terrestrial
palaeoclimatology at the University of Tübingen, used further fossils for
a reconstruction of the vegetation and climate of the area during the time
of deposition. Thus, the mean yearly temperature was approximately 20
°C in the area of what is now Southern Germany, some 11 °C above
today's conditions. Winters were frost-free. There was a swamp to the
south of the lake, full of reed beds and a coast line of trees, palm trees
(amongst them the climbing rattan palms), lianas, ferns and grasses. To
the north was a slope covered by an evergreen forest. This vegetation is
unique in the circum-Alpine area. Possibly, this exceptional situation was
the result of regional peculiarities at a time of rather fast climate change.
As the authors write, “The chronologic relationships support the idea that
the Engelswies hominoid was a descendent of Early Miocene AfroArabian afropithecins”. This find is thus the earliest known trace of
hominoids which immigrated to Eurasia from Africa. “The significant gap
between the Engelswies hominoid and later European kenyapithecines
as well as paleoclimatic considerations lead us to speculate that this
early out of Africa migration end up in a dead end” African hominoids
(Kenyapithecines) came to Eurasia again perhaps merely 14 Million
years ago, and then evolved into the first large hominids (e.g. Orang
Utan).
Citation: Böhme, M., et al., Bio-magnetostratigraphy and environment of the oldest Eurasian
hominoid from the Early Miocene of Engelswies (Germany), Journal of Human Evolution (2011),
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.04.012.
Research for this publication was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme
University Tübingen
Department of Geoscience
Senckenberg Center for
Human Evolution and Palaeoecology (HEP)
Sigwartstraße 10 · 72074 Tübingen
Telefon: +49 7071 29-73191
m.boehme[at]ifg.uni-tuebingen.de
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17 million years old molar tooth oft the hominoid from Engelswies.
Foto: Böhme
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