Primitive hominoids

Kenyapithecus africanus & Kenyapithecus wickeri

Kenyapithecus africanus is also known as Equatorius africanus due to its permanent area of habitation in central Africa. This was the earliest known ape which can be confirmed to have occasionally left the treetops for the ground, about 15.5 million years ago when the dense African rainforests first began to give way to a more open woodland.

Africanus/Equatorius (in the left-hand photo) is the more primitive of the two Kenyapithecus genus. It has a remarkably scant fossil record - little more than a collection of teeth and this cast of the lower jaw. For the moment very little is known about it, except that it does not seem to be related at all to the living great apes.

Previously thought to have been identical to Kenyapithecus africanus, wickeri (right) is a more advanced genus. It was about the size of a large adult male baboon. Its arms and legs were about the equivalent length, with a long, flexible vertebral column and powerful grasping hands and feet. It spent considerable time on the ground but also used the trees a great deal.

This adaptiveness would have helped it in a possible (and possibly only partial) migration out of Africa and into Lower Europe some fourteen million years ago, an event which cannot yet be proven, and indeed is still contentious. In support of the claim, wickeri bears remarkable similarities to later fossils found there. Some researchers also think that it may be a direct ancestor of modern man.

Kenyapithecus wickeri image © Hominoid 1101. Original text copyright © P L Kessler and the History Files. An original feature for the History Files. Go back return home, or go to Hominid Chronology Part 1.