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

现存的类人猿（大猩猩、红毛猩猩、黑猩猩和倭黑猩猩）和人类最早的近亲化石是在大约1650万年前的欧亚大陆发现的。虽然类人猿和人类更原始的祖先生活在非洲，但直到类人猿化石出现在欧亚大陆数百万年后，人们才知道它们来自非洲大陆。这项研究的目的是探索欧洲的一个地区，那里有丰富的早期猿类进化关键时期的化石地点，以更好地了解类人猿出现在欧洲而不是非洲的原因，以及它们在返回非洲和东南亚后最终在那里灭绝的原因。当地和全球的气候条件促进了类人猿的进化，类人猿代表了大约700万年前人类的共同祖先。我们将从潘诺尼亚盆地的100多个化石地点收集地质和古生物数据，潘诺尼亚盆地占据了匈牙利的大部分地区和克罗地亚、波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那、塞尔维亚和罗马尼亚的大部分地区。除了预期的新猿类化石和其他哺乳动物化石的收集和分析之外，我们还将使用GIS技术重建景观、气候变化和哺乳动物在大陆之间的运动。这将为我们提供一个框架，以了解导致类人猿化石进化和最终灭绝的生态条件的细节，以及导致人类和我们的化石亲戚起源的环境和过程。

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.