The remains are more than two million years old. The main find is a fossil skull that was found in the South African cave of Malapa and that once belonged to the oldest known individual of the species Papio angusticeps , which has many similarities with modern species of baboon ( Papio hamadryas ) , according to the study led by Christopher Gilbert and published in PLoS ONE .
Until now there was no agreement among scientists about the origin of this species from the fossil record. The skull was partially preserved in the site known as the Cradle of Humanity –in Malapa (South Africa) -, the same site where the partial skeletons of the new species of primitive hominids, Australopithecus sediba , were discovered in 2010. Gilbert explains that baboons are known to have coexisted with hominids in various areas where fossils were found in East and South Africa.
In fact, they are sometimes even used as comparative models in human evolution. This skull has been found in the Australopithecus sediba excavation campaign, and together with the rest of the Papio angusticeps fossils, it confirms that its species was closely related to modern baboons – Papio hamadryas – , with whose older individuals it probably coexisted. Modern baboons ( Papio ) are divided into a series of populations distributed throughout the territory of sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
Despite their evolutionary success, the origins of modern baboons in the fossil record had not been correctly interpreted or there was no consensus among experts. “According to molecular clock studies – a technique to date the divergence of two species – it is estimated that baboons separated from their closest relatives between 1.8 to 2.2 million years ago. Until now, most of the fossil specimens known within this time range were too fragmented to be definitive or too primitive to be identified as members of the species Papio hamadryas, “says Gilbert.
