Separate chapters have been given to afropithecines and kenyapithecines from Africa and Europe, both because they represent the first apes to leave Africa and because the latter group has strongly derived characters distinguishing it from earlier apes. The two groups will be treated together in the present chapter, however, for they also share many aspects of morphology, for example in the molars and jaws, and there is little difference in the environments associated with the two groups, not least when they are found together at one site. In other words, there does not seem to be a significant adaptive shift accompanying either the move into Europe or the morphological innovations seen in the kenyapithecines.

Environments in Europe

Ecological reconstruction of the site at Engelswies is based on several lines of evidence all indicating subtropical woodland where the earliest record of fossil hominids outside Africa is known. The evidence comes from several different stratigraphic levels, with small mammals at one level, large mammals from several metres below and plant remains from yet another level. The plant remains show the presence of an evergreen laurophyllous flora growing in a subtropical humid climate. This is a relic of the oak−laurel−palm forests that extended across southern Europe during the Paleogene and early Neogene supported by monsoonal climates with warm, wet summers and frost-free winters. Lower temperatures across Europe and the change to a pattern of winter rainfall have resulted in the replacement of laurel forests by schlerophyllous evergreen and broad-leaved deciduous forests over most of their range, but during the middle Miocene the floral evidence shows that subtropical conditions persisted, such as at Engelswies. The structure of these woodlands that still exist today is a single discontinuous upper canopy, often with conifers such as redwoods (Sequoia species) and a lower and denser evergreen canopy of laurels.

Analysis of the community structure of the mammal fauna from Engelswies is based on a composite fauna of large and small mammals, even though they are found in different levels. Even combining the two sets, the Engelswies fauna is small and only partially representative of the original fauna, and there is no information on the taphonomic bias affecting the fossil assemblages. Bearing these limitations in mind, terrestrial species have highest representation but only slightly higher than semi-arboreal species.