Current evidence indicates a Eurasian origin for the Last Common Ancestor of African apes and humans, and supports a new hypothesis suggesting that the Zanclean Megaflood (5.3 Ma) may have played a role in the ultimate divergence of Pan and Homo.
While the established paradigm of human evolution asserts that the lineages leading to the extant great apes and Homo arose in Africa, the large number of fossil discoveries from Europe in recent decades support arguments for a European origin of the Hominidae (all great apes) and plausibly, also a European common ancestor of the Homininae (African