Todd Wood's Take on Danuvius

Todd Wood is always interesting to read, even if I don’t share his chronological leanings.  He has thoughts on the new Miocene ape from Bavaria, Danuvius:

Based on the fragmentary remains, we make some really interesting observations about the anatomy of Danuvius. These apes had strongly opposed big toes, which would allow them to effectively grip things with their feet. Their tibiae (shinbones) have the kinds of joints that would allow them to walk upright, and their femora (thighbones) support that conclusion. These apes might have been in some way bipedal. The arm bones they found have traits that are associated with suspensory locomotion, like hanging from tree branches. The body size was fairly small, about the mass of a bonobo.

As I mentioned in my post, I think the evidence for bipedalism is vastly over-stated and, even if it can be shown that this “Extended Limb Clambering” is shared by other fossil ape finds from the region, there is no particular reason to think that these critters were ancestral to later hominins. It is entirely likely that they exhibited a separate adaptation to this particular style of locomotion.  Todd raises some other questions, though, that are not answered in the paper:

So why not address similarities of Danuvius to later fossil hominins? The authors are trying to establish a new means of locomotion that they call Extended Limb Clambering (ELC). So they compare Danuvius to living primates (where the authors know how they get around), and they’re interested in comparing it to contemporary Miocene apes of Europe. But they’re not all that excited about other comparisons to later fossil forms like Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, or Orrorin. They also don’t relate their findings to later fossil apes in Europe like Graecopithecus or the Trachilos tracks, both of which have been linked to hominins or bipedality. Perhaps they don’t think those things are worth talking about (maybe because they’re skeptical of Graecopithecus like I am), but I guess I just don’t agree.

I think that part of the reason that these questions are not raised is because there is so much of a gap between these finds, chronologically and geographically. There is simply with which to relate them. As Todd points out, the hominin status of Graecopithecus is dubious, at best, and, even if the Trachilos tracks are hominin, they are still quite a distance from Bavaria and six million years later in time.

For now, this fossil ape stands on its own.  If we find other evidence of incipient bipedality in other forms in the area and can relate them to later forms, then the picture might change.  For now, though, Danuvius is a very interesting, odd Miocene ape.