Graecopithecus

Graecopithecus is an extinct genus of hominid that lived in southeast Europe during the late Miocene around 7.2 million years ago. Originally identified by a single lower jawbone bearing teeth found in Pyrgos Vasilissis, Athens, Greece, in 1944, other teeth potentially belonging to this taxon were discovered from Azmaka quarry in Bulgaria in 2012. With only little and badly preserved materials to reveal its nature, it is considered as "the most poorly known European Miocene hominoids." The creature was popularly nicknamed 'El Graeco' (word play on the Greek-Spanish painter El Greco) by scientists. In 2017, palaeontologists led by Madelaine Böhme of the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Germany, published a controversial analysis of the teeth and age of the specimens, and came to the conclusion that it could be the oldest hominin, meaning that it could be the oldest direct ancestors of humans after splitting from that of the chimpanzees. Their simultaneous study also claimed that contrary to the generally accepted evidence of the African origin of the hominin lineage, the ancestors of humans originated from the main ape ancestry in the Mediterranean region (before migrating into Africa where they evolved into the ancestors of Homo species). They named the origin of human theory as the "North Side Story." These claims have been dismissed by most other scientists. Rick Potts and Bernard Wood argued that the evidence is too flimsy to even say it is a hominin. Tim D. White suggested that the analysis was an attempt to resurrect a "tired argument" for the European origins of human beings, while Sergio Almécija stated that single characters such as teeth could not support sweeping evolutionary claims.