Discovering fossil teeth mysterious 9.7 million years old in Germany

Archaeologists in Germany have found strange fossil teeth similar to the apes that were discovered in Africa but appeared millions of years earlier.

A group of German archaeologists discovered mysterious teeth at the heart of the Rhine River, according to the Natural History Museum in Mainz on October 18.

According to DW, the teeth do not seem to belong to any species ever discovered in Europe or Asia.They seem to be most similar to the Lucy gibbon , extinct relatives of humans that were discovered in Ethiopia.

Scientists believe that the recently discovered tooth in the archaeological site in Germany belongs to an ancient branch of Eurasian primate.(Photo: National Geographic).

However, new teeth are found to be at least 4 million years older than the skeletons in Africa. This has confounded scientists.

The team excavated the teeth in September 2016 from Eppelsheim, an archaeological site near Munich famous for primate fossils. This is considered an unprecedented discovery in Eppelsheim for 80 years.

"What is found clearly shows that the gap in our understanding and in the fossils found is still very large," Herbert Lutz, the research leader, deputy director of the Mainz Museum of Natural History , tell ResearchGate.

"Where these individuals come from and why no one has ever discovered such teeth anywhere else is still completely mysterious , " Lutz said.

According to National Geographic, these teeth may belong to Eurasian primates. This species is likely to face evolutionary pressures like distant relatives in Africa, regardless of geography. This may lead to similar tooth shapes, a common phenomenon in evolution that is called concurrency .