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August 4, 2011

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Scientists unearth ancient ape

UGANDAN and French scientists have discovered the fossilized skull of a tree-climbing ape from about 20 million years ago in Uganda's Karamoja region.

The scientists found the remains last month while looking for fossils near an extinct volcano in Karamoja, a semi-arid region in northeast Uganda.

Martin Pickford, a paleontologist from the College de France in Paris, said: "This is the first time that the complete skull of an ape of this age has been found. It is a highly important fossil."

He said preliminary studies showed the tree-climbing herbivore, roughly 10 years old when it died, had a head the size of a chimpanzee's but a brain the size of a baboon's, a bigger ape.

Bridgette Senut, a professor at the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, said the remains would be taken to Paris to be x-rayed and documented before being returned to Uganda.

She said: "It will be cleaned in France, it will be prepared in France and then in about one year's time it will be returned to the country."

The paleontologists said it was a specimen of a species they called Ugandapithecus major, which was first described by Senut in 2000 on the basis of fragmentary remains.



 

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