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About Pierolapithecus:
Understanding the importance of Pierolapithecus requires a brief primer in primate evolution. Paleontologists believe that, some time during the middle Miocene epoch, there existed a common ancestor (or "concestor") that spawned two important evolutionary lines: the great apes (which includes chimpanzees, orangutans and humans) and the lesser apes (which today are represented mostly by gibbons). Discovered in 2004 in Spain, Pierolapithecus was touted as just this "missing link," since it combined some distinctly ape-like features (mostly having to do with the structure of its wrists and thorax) with some monkey-like characteristics, such as its sloped face and short fingers and toes. Crucially, Pierolopathicus seemed to possess the beginnings of the necessary adaptations for climbing trees in an ape-like style.
As you can imagine, not everyone is comfortable assigning a place to Pierolapithecus at the base of both great ape and lesser ape evolution. Some paleontologists maintain that this prehistoric primate had much more in common with African apes than with orangutans, and thus could not have been the long-sought-for "concestor," while others point out how odd it would be for a western European primate to have spawned the African hominids that gave rise to modern humans. (To be fair, though, it's possible that the Mediterranean Sea wasn't as insurmountable a barrier to migration 13 million years ago as it is today!)
