http://phys.org/news/2015-10-primate-species-root-tree-extant.htmlLiving hominoids are a group of primates that includes the small-bodied apes (the lesser apes, or gibbons and siamangs, which constitute the family Hylobatidae) and the larger-bodied great apes (orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees), which, along with humans, belong to the family Hominidae. All extant hominoids share several features, such as the lack of external tail, an orthograde body plan that enables an upright trunk position, and several cranial characteristics. All these features might have been present in the common ancestor of hominids and hylobatids that, according to molecular data, would have lived about 15-20 million years ago.
Researchers from the 'Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont' (ICP) have described the new genus and species of extinct hominoid, Pliobates cataloniae, based on a partial skeleton composed of 70 fossil remains found in 2011 in one of the sites within the stratigraphic series of Abocador de Can Mata (els Hostalets de Pierola, Barcelona, Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula). These include most of the skull and dentition as well as a considerable portion of the left arm, including several elements of the elbow and wrist joints. They belong to an ape similar in size to the smallest of living gibbons (4 to 5 kg), which lived 11.6 million years ago. Pliobates shows, for the first time in a primate fossil of this size, a set of characteristic features of extant hominoids, presumably inherited from their last common ancestor, which probably lived in Africa several million years before Pliobates.
