Dryopithecini

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Dryopithecini is an extinct tribe of Eurasian and African great apes that are believed to be close to the ancestry of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans. They are a mid-late Miocene group as far as is known, diversifying rapidly one or two million years before to the Tortonian, and flourishing throughout that age, but probably originating in the early Serravallian already, with the oldest fossils sometimes assigned to this lineage almost 15 million years old. They were mid- to large-sized primates, weighing as much as a gibbon or large chimpanzee (20-45 kg), and perhaps more. The relationships and extent of this group are not thoroughly understood, and at least in its widest circumscription, it is probably not monophyletic. As a tribe of the Homininae, it is assumed to be embedded within the African great apes. Authors who consider them to be basal to these, and no closer to modern humans than Asian great apes, treat them as distinct subfamily Dryopithecinae instead. Either way, members of this group are called dryopithecines or dryopithecins in English.