Jaw bones from Wadi Moghra are the first clear fossil ape from North Africa

Jaw bones from Egypt's Western Desert have been described as a new fossil ape, the first definite ape species known from North Africa. The Independent reported on November 2, 2026, that researchers at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre named it Masripithecus moghraensis. It lived about 17 to 18 million years ago, in the Early Miocene, and the fossils came from Wadi Moghra. The genus name joins Masr, an Arabic name for Egypt, with the Greek for ape. The species name marks the place.

Only jaws were found. They have a large canine and molars with rounded chewing surfaces. Author Shorouq Al-Ashqar told the paper, which said the study is in the journal Science, that the team reads the teeth as a flexible diet based mainly on fruit, with the ability to handle harder foods such as nuts or seeds when seasons demanded it. Co-author Erik Seiffert, of the University of Southern California, said he had long thought the common ancestor of living apes lived in or around East Africa, and that this fossil and the team's analysis challenge that idea.

The Independent's headline says the find could rewrite the human origin story. The evidence in the report is a set of jaws and an argument about geography. It is not a complete skeleton, and it does not place a human ancestor at the site. The news is a named ape from a region that had monkey fossils from the same age but, until now, no definite ape.