A group of archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to be the fossilised remains of the earliest baboon ever discovered. A team from Wits University's Evolutionary Studies Institute discovered a partial skull of the monkey specimen at Malapa, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.
"Baboons are known to have co-existed with hominins at several fossil localities in East Africa and South Africa and they are sometimes even used as comparative models in human evolution," says Dr Christopher Gilbert, from Hunter College, CUNY, lead author of the study.