Ancient Ancestor

Swinging down from a tree in the lush forest that stood in what is now the Fayum desert region in Egypt, the little creature reached the riverbank and began to drink. Suddenly it was attacked and eaten by a crocodile-like reptile that rose without warning from the water. All that the predator left behind was the victim's head, which sank to the bottom and became embedded in the sand. In New Haven, Conn., last week, some 28 million years after this hypothetical drama, Yale Paleontologist Elwyn Simons displayed the ancient skull and reported that it belonged to the most primitive ape ever discovered--the earliest known member of man's family tree.

The skull of the ape, named Aegyptopithecus zeuxis (for "linking Egyptian ape"), was found protruding from rock during a 1966 Yale expedition to the Fayum desert. But it was not until the specimen had been returned to Yale and extracted from its rock casement that Simons realized that it was an un usually complete skull of a primate, lacking only portions of its top and bottom and four incisor teeth. "Not only is the skull some eight to ten million years older than any other fossils related to man," Simons said, "but it is better preserved than any that are older than 300,000 years."

Scientists established the age of the ancient skull by using the potassium argon method of dating an overlying lava flow, which is apparently 26 million years old. The location of the skull, 300 ft. below, indicated that it was about 2,000,000 years older. Aegyptopithecus, Simons believes, "stands near the very base of the genealogical tree leading to later Great Apes and man. It represents a major stage in the documentation of the forerunners of man."

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