A jawbone of a pre-human great ape that a team of Kenyan and Japanese researchers found in the volcanic mud flow deposits from Kenya’s Nakali region might represent the already legendary “missing link” from the evolution theory. The jawbone discovered in Kenya is about 10 million-years-old and the researchers believe that it belonged to a new species of great ape, which might be the last common ancestor of today’s gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and… humans.

According to the scientists, Nakalipithecus nakayamai – as the newfound species was called – seems to be the last species before the great split that determined the apparition of the human race on Earth. Nakalipithecus nakayamai resembles Ouranopithecus macedoniensis, which was the previously found species that scientists formerly believed to be the closest common ancestor of man and the great apes. Ouranopithecus macedoniensis was found in Greece.

The recently found species that might prove to be the “missing link” between us and our closest ancestors, the great apes, appears to have been somewhere between the size of a female orangutan and the size of a female gorilla. According to Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute’s researcher Yutaka Kunimatsu, Nakalipithecus nakayamai seems to have eaten nuts, fruit and seeds. "The teeth were covered in thick enamel and the caps were low and voluminous, suggesting that the diet of this ape consisted of a considerable amount of hard objects, like nuts or seeds, and fruit, ” Kunimatsu said, adding that, "It could be positioned before the split between gorillas, chimps and humans.”

Yutaka Kunimatsu’s colleague, Senior Research Scientist at the National Museums of Kenya, Frederick Manthi, added that, "Based on this particular discovery, we can comfortably say we are approaching the point at which we can pin down the so-called missing link.” He also said that the scientists have to find more fossils from a cross-section of sites to sustain that particular theory. The researchers admitted that it was hard even to determine what the new species looked like.

However, the new findings, which were published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are very important because they strengthen the theory that the evolution from ape to human might have taken place entirely in Africa. The former belief was that the common ancestor descended from a repatriated hominid that left Africa about 16.5 million years ago and headed to Asia or Europe, only to return about 9.5 million years ago.