The Coal Man

When the Swiss scientist was awakened, it was 2 a.m. in the dreary Tuscan hamlet of Baccinello (pop. 400). But Paleontologist Johannes Hurzeler leaped from bed in a blink. In a coal seam 600 ft. under the village, a miner's torch had lighted an ancient white bone. Down in the depths Hurzeler dug farther with trembling care. Last week he ended a nine-year treasure hunt, exhumed the first complete fossil skeleton of an Oreopithecus ("mountain ape"). The age of the coal: 10 million years.

Most paleontologists have discarded the theory that man defected from the ancestors of apes and dropped out of the trees only a few million years ago. The common ancestor, if there was one, now appears to have lived far earlier. This might be a kind of primate with mixed monkey and ape traits, or even an ancestor of the imp-eyed little Asian tarsier, which was a groundling before it took to the trees; anatomically, man has much in common with such animals. If Hurzeler's 4-ft. creature is what he says it is, the earliest manlike creature yet discovered, man may be many times older than he thinks he is.

A Look at the Teeth. Oreopithecus lived in Miocene-period marshes, which are now coal areas around Grosseto, in central Italy. His first fossil bones were found in 1872, have always been labeled monkey fragments. But in 1949 Hurzeler became convinced that Oreopithecus was a higher type. For years he pored over bits of jaws and teeth at Basel Natural History Museum, where he is curator of vertebrate paleontology.

When he broached his theory in New York in 1956, he mainly cited Oreopithecus' teeth as far smaller and straighter than those found in fossil monkeys. The teeth were not foward-jutting, he said, and had no simian gap. The chin was rounded instead of pointed; the jawbone had a hole for a nerve passage which is characteristic of humans. But the evidence still seemed scanty to U.S. scientists. To expand it, Hurzeler set out 28 months ago, with backing from Manhattan's Wenner-Gren Foundation, to find an entire Oreopithecus skeleton, came to be called "keeper of the abominable coal man" by weary friends.

Down from the Tree. His finding last week was a boost for his theory. Sent off to Basel, Oreopithecus will undergo months of study before its vintage is truly certified. But Hurzeler quickly reported definite human affinities. Examples: a manlike big toe close to other toes, a short pelvis and wide ilium, which may indicate that Oreopithecus walked erect instead of swinging from trees. Hurzeler suggests that "men and apes have a common ancestor ten times older than we thought, perhaps 60 to 70 million years back. At least 10 million years ago, manlike characteristics were in full swing."

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