Pattern and timing of miocene hominid dispersals and extant hominid origins in Eurasia and Africa

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The earliest fossil relatives of living great apes (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos) and humans are found in Eurasia about 16.5 million years ago.  While the more primitive ancestors of the great apes and humans lived in Africa, fossil great apes are not known from that continent until millions of years after they appear in Eurasia.  The goal of this research is to explore a region of Europe that is rich in fossil localities from this critical time in early ape evolution, to gain a greater understanding of the reasons great apes appear in Europe and not Africa, and the reasons they eventually go extinct there after returning to Africa and Southeast Asia.  Local and global climatic conditions contributed to the evolution of great apes, which represent the common ancestor from which humans arose about 7 million years ago.  We will collect geological and paleontological data from more than 100 fossil localities in the Pannonian Basin, which occupies most of Hungary and much of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Romania.  In addition to the anticipated collection and analysis of new fossil apes and other fossil mammals, we will use GIS technology to reconstruct landscapes, climate change, and the movements of mammals over time between continents.  This will provide us with a framework for understanding details of the ecological conditions that led to the evolution and eventual extinction of fossil apes and the circumstances and processes leading to the origin of humans and our fossil relatives.