Fossil chimpanzee, and now we know it all.

	Strangely, in this week's issue of Nature, scientists present two discoveries that seem like they should be juxtaposed in time; the complete sequencing of chimpanzee DNA and the first discovery of a fossil chimpanzee. That is right! Until this week there have been no reported fossil chimps discovered. This absence of chimp fossils has been tricky to explain, especially since so many early human fossils have been discovered. Sally McBrearty and Nina Jablonski offer a reason; fossil chimps likely were restricted to woodland habitats and did not venture into the savannas like our early ancestors. Such a habitat difference has lead to a bias in the fossil record. The oldest fossil chimp is an assemblage of three teeth discovered from the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and are around 500,000 years old. This same formation has produced specimens of Hominin fossils attributed to Homo erectus or Homo rhodesiensis.
McBrearty, S. and Jablonski, N. G. 2005. First fossil chimpanzee. Nature 437, 105-108 (1 September 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature04008